robbalvey

And this is exactly what we have been saying this entire thread!

It might not be outwardly negative, but on this forum it always feels like a backhanded compliment at best. I'm trying to think of anything really favorable that's been said about the general public, and I'm drawing a blank. There is nothing wrong with a ride that brings in millions of dollars because it's a high profile ride with the locals, however might not score an A+ with all "enthusiasts." The two things do not always go hand in hand. Do I wish they did? Absolutely. But it's interesting how a park can build a $10 million RMC that will blow some enthusiasts away, yet a giant $25 million ride will underwhelm others. The most important thing about Fury 325 is if the public loves it, embraces it, and brings buckets of cash to ride it. And if they do, then it's a success.

^ I don't think he's actually saying that at all. If anything I feel like he's saying that he didn't think the ride had much airtime overall, but when there was some airtime, he found it in the back rows. At least that's what I took away from it, and I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "first line" but I think you meant "first row?" What I find very interesting is that this seems to happen on just about EVERY SINGLE B&M HYPER I've ever been on where everyone says how much AWESOME airtime it has on it, and then I'll go ride it and I find it has floater airtime at best. IMO, I'm not expecting anything more than that even with people trying to tell me how much amazing near-ejector air it has.

We were there pretty much the entire day and we had one of the operations managers with us the first half of the day.

I'm not sure I've seen a new coaster receive so many totally contrasting reviews. I do find it interesting that the more positive reviews are coming from far less seasoned riders. Kind of justifies two things: 1. This ride really IS meant more for the "general public" (which is not a negative thing) and 2. Seasoned riders are harder to impress. (In a way, kind of a bad thing, but I can relate.) Been interesting reading through all the vastly different reviews of the ride.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, not that it's important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Prp615mmDk It makes sense if you don't think about it.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, not that it's important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Prp615mmDk

I'm pretty sure that was just made up by idiots of our forum who were looking for drama or something.

This comment makes zero sense. That's like saying that everyone has to like every movie just because they exist.

I'll let Derek & Eric expand on this more when they get back from the event, but here are some of their thoughts they communicated to me for Twitter: "It's fast and curvy" "Fast, fun, and curvy with floater air." "It's better than Leviathan." "It's semi-thrilling." "The extra track delivers more thrills and add airtime that leviathan lacks." "Floater first drop then just lots ofcurves and a few floater airtime thrown in at the end" "GP will love it and it's good for park to attract new visitors." "Overall, Fury 325 will thrill the pants off day guests, but may not wow seasoned riders as much."

I'm guessing we won't actually be lucky enough for this to be your last post, but a man can dream. Oh, trust me, that was his last post!

I agree with this man. I also hate when discussion happens on discussion boards. Maybe you should get the hell off our discussion boards then. No one needs or wants stupid comments like this.

I have always been of the opinion that if a park is going to spend $25 million on a coaster it better damn well melt your face off!!!

No. Wanted to ride as little as possible get out of that park as quickly as possible. The condor had a 45 minute line.

Um, you do realize that park is a two hour flight from where we are at, right? "Hang on a second, let me just stop by real quick and check it out!"

TPR is at the Fury 325 media day! Be sure to re-tweet ALL of our tweets today as we will be giving away Fury 325 stuff! TPR is @CarowindsPark for the opening of #Fury325! World's Largest Giga Roller Coaster! Stay tuned for more updates! OMG! #Fury325 looks AWESOME at night!!! RT if you want to ride! @CarowindsPark TPR walking across the new entrance to @CarowindsPark with #Fury325 above! Beautiful! #Fury325 looks absolutely amazing! RT to say CONGRATS to @CarowindsPark! Awesome pano shot of @CarowindsPark new entrance with #Fury325! RT if you want to ride! Some #Fury325 stats for you! @CarowindsPark Ha! The #Fury325 shop is called "The Hive!" Love it! Awesome merch, too! @CarowindsPark #Fury325 official opening ceremony is underway! @CarowindsPark Over $18,000 raised in the #Fury325 first rider auction @CarowindsPark! Congrats Carowinds & Cam Newton Foundation! #Fury325 @CarowindsPark is officially OPEN! (Media and invited guests today only.) RT if you want to ride! There goes the very first #Fury325 riders! RT if you wish you were on that train! @CarowindsPark #FuryFever First #Fury325 review in from TPR Member Rick: "Fury 325 delivers on speed but not so much on airtime" @CarowindsPark EDIT: Derek & Eric's comments on Fury 325: I'll let Derek & Eric expand on this more when they get back from the event, but here are some of their thoughts they communicated to me for Twitter: "It's fast and curvy" "Fast, fun, and curvy with floater air." "It's better than Leviathan." "It's semi-thrilling." "The extra track delivers more thrills and add airtime that leviathan lacks." "Floater first drop then just lots ofcurves and a few floater airtime thrown in at the end" "GP will love it and it's good for park to attract new visitors." "Overall, great ride! Fury 325 will thrill the pants off day guests, but may not totally wow seasoned riders as much." Eric's full review: This was my first time to the park, so I had no previous reference of what the park skyline looked like before, but I have to say with Fury 325, the park looks stunning from all over the area! As soon as you get on I-77 from the loop, Fury 325 is already visible. Once again, since this was my first visit, I never saw the original entrance, but I was very impressed with the new entrance. Carowinds definitely achieved making a marquee entrance that will thrill and excite guests for years to come. Now onto the new ride. I thought it was a lot of fun. The first drop will take your breath away and the speed up the 2nd hill is wonderful. At this point as you soar over the entrance plaza and out to the turnaround, the ride seems to go through the emotions a bit. It is still fast of course and there are some forces to be had, but the main purpose of this section of the ride, in my opinion, is to look nice and pretty for the front of the park. Now with that said, as soon as you drop out of the turnaround and down into the tunnel, the ride picks right back up! The drop into the tunnel takes your breath away and the first airtime hill has strong floater airtime. The ride hauls to the brake run and really seems to utilize the speed it has built up well for the finale. Could the ride have done more with the height of the lift hill? Sure. As an enthusiast, I am a little jaded when it comes to what I expect in an extreme coaster. With that said, the ride is absolutely re-rideable and the General public is going to eat of up! Carowinds accomplished what it intended in building a marquee attraction that not only looks wonderful but is a lot of fun! Now, for the media day itself. The park looked great and everywhere you turned you saw excited employees and special entertainment from the event. The opening presentation was well done. It was the perfect length and entertaining. After the presentation everyone lined up for that ride. Here is where my only real complaint about the day occurred. The park set up a separate line for media who wanted to get custom rider POV. The park had set up the 2nd row of two ofthe trains with a Go Pro, and The major problem here was that half of the people in line didn't know they were only waiting for one row. So not only did it take an hour plus to get to ride, but as we got go to the top we witnessed constant confusion by the media and the employees that were sorting the whole thing. The whole deal would of worked better at a separate time than the grand opening event. There was just too many people to try and satisfy all the media that wanted the Go Pro footage. Enough about that and back to the positives...the park was kind enough to open Intimidator and the new, Slingshot for the event. This was much appreciated! And now, the food. The park showcased a lot of the new cuisine coming in 2015 and it did not disappoint. There was shrimp, oysters, duck meat, gelato, and a TON more. The food more than made up for the long wait for the rider footage. To conclude, the park looks great, Fury is a great ride, and you should definitely check it out! Derek's Review: Time for my review of Fury 325 after 3 rides today! Fury 325 was my 945th different coaster ridden and definitely changes the skyline of Carowinds forever. The new entrance right now seems very Cedar Fair-ish, lots of white cement and open spaces with no shade, but a giant hulking roller coaster all up in your face from the moment you park your car and walk in. So now Carowinds not only greets you at the south entrance with a B&M, they also do so at the north entrance. The ride itself sits back where the skycoaster used to be, near Hurler and the diner. Fastlane and regular entrances exist, and no loose articles are permitted on the ride and there were no bins present in the station, all things must be secured in zippered pockets or in the fluffy, fluffy bunnies filled with medicine and goo just outside the ride next to The Hive gift shop at the ride exit. No additional queue exits for guests wishing to wait for the front row. The lift seems to move fairly well until the train reaches the top, offering ample time to check out the views of the park, planes taking off from the airport, and downtown Charlotte in the distance. The first drop is nice and long, though I felt it was a bit weaker than even other B&Ms like Apollo's Chariot or Nitro. The next sequence of turns, curves, and dips set up the sensation of speed you'd expect. To me, the banked turn over the park's entry didn't really do much and I really think they should have gone with an overbank or something. The far turn and dive below the entry plaza is great, and provides that extra push of speed before heading on to the bunny hills...until the trim grabs the train, more felt in the back. I wouldn't classify the airtime as normal floater, nor is it ejector, it's more like sustained floater, but it's good and gives the ride something else beside the speed and a bunch of turns. The helix doesn't really have much in terms of positive G's, but is a nice way to kill some of the speed instead of just slamming into the brakes. The final hills offer the same sustained floater air and make the ride seem more complete than Leviathan. It's a decent, fun coaster that is easy to enjoy, but it may not scratch all of your adrenaline itch. I would rank it somewhere around 90-100 in my rankings, which would still put it in the B range of rides. It's better than Leviathan, but I prefer the other Gigacoasters to this, as well as several B&M hypers. I wasn't disappointed in my 600 mile drive to ride it, nor was I blown away to the point of planning to do the drive on a monthly basis or move to Charlotte or get a timeshare or something like that. It's a ride that the seasoned rider could expect B&M to make these days just by looking at the computer animations and POVs, more of the same old cold and calculated B&M that doesn't do anything really unique and different, but it's also something that the general public can eat up, tolerate, and reride. In the long run, that's really all we can hope the ride does, attract the masses and raise their levels so we can get crazier coasters for years to come. Looks like Carowinds is already planning next year's investment, announcement coming in August and it will make a splash and keep Carowinds rolling along (or something like that). I'm calling Aquatrax!

I'm honestly not sure I could rank them, but if i had to it would look something like this: 1. Texas Giant, Outlaw Run, Medusa 2. Iron Rattler 3. Goliath I seriously cannot separate the top 3.

Since we were so blown away by Medusa today, and since I took hundreds of photos at Six Flags Mexico which is a lot of sort through, I decided for this update I'd just post some photos of Medusa! Enjoy! Climbing the lift hill you see this...you really don't have an idea of what's about to come next! I love these reverse POV shots! This reverse POV shot gives you an idea of the layout. Coming up... AIRTIME!!! Medusa serves up a perfect mix of twistyness, inversions, and airtime. Everything about this ride seems perfectly paced. It's just beautiful. I mean, look at that! And the airtime is UNREAL! I *love* this shot of the first drop...and the drop is amazing! Would love to see this included in more RMC rides in the future! This photo pretty much sums up our thoughts on the ride! Oh, and Medusa does this to your hair! The ride is just relentless! And oddly enough, with they nylon wheels on the train, it *feels* a lot more like a wood coaster than the RMC conversion projects in Texas do. I know it's consider a steel coaster (as it should be), but it has a different feel to it, and I like that. Backseat POV!!! This ride is worth a trip to Mexico for! It was hard to get good off-ride shots because it's just so damn fast! Looks like some happy faces! Airtime... airtime... and MORE airtme! This drop is just sick! Everyone LOVES Medusa!!! Check out that hairtime in the middle of the train! Seriously just an all-around KICK-ASS coaster! Blew us all away! You need to get to Six Flags Mexico to ride it!

HOLY CRAP THIS!!! Medusa was seriously one of the top five coasters in the world! More photos and stuff soon!

^ The trip is not over yet, and we don't always do the exact same things on the exact same day every trip.

Moving this to the main forum.

No. Just a fan.

^ When we are ready to announce something, we will post it to the forum.

Yes.

Intense, Limited Run BATMAN™ Coaster Experience Coming to Six Flags Great Adventure BATMAN™: The Ride Backwards and El Diablo Headline 2015 Spring/Summer Season JACKSON, NJ — March 24, 2015 — Six Flags Great Adventure, the world’s largest theme park, unveils a second thrilling roller coaster experience for 2015 as it flips one of its most innovative and adrenaline-charged coasters backwards for a limited time. The park also debuts its 13th roller coaster – El Diablo – during its 2015 season, which kicks off April 3. BATMAN™: The Ride becomes even more intense as it undergoes a gravity-defying role reversal from July 4th weekend to Labor Day weekend. Guests can dare to take on an all-new experience on the world-famous suspended, looping coaster when its chair lift-style train is flipped 180 degrees on the track. BATMAN™: The Ride Backwards Fast Facts: Soar backwards, chair-lift style (beneath the track) 50-mph juggernaut Five gut-wrenching inversions guests never see coming 2,700 feet of twisted track Since opening in 1993, BATMAN™: The Ride has given more than 27 million thrilling rides and reigns as one of the most popular roller coasters in the world. “The ride’s intensity is ratcheted way up,” said John Fitzgerald, Six Flags Great Adventure president. “Thrill seekers will not want to miss this limited-time opportunity to put their inner ‘super hero’ to the test.”