britishdebutante

I just went to Alabama Adventure the other day and witnessed at least 5 rider operators doing things that were unsafe. In just 5 minutes in the Rampage station, I noticed two ride operators with IPOD earbuds in their ears, a rider operator let a child jump the track in front of the stationary train, ride operator pretending he was going to throw another's bag onto the track while the train was out in the circuit, and a ride operator actually traveling below the station while the ride was running to retrieve a water bottle that a guest had dropped down there to receive a $20 tip from the guest. No "all clears" from ride ops at all. The Zoomerang ride operators were wearing bluetooth headsets and did not pull on or even touch the restraints once they were locked. I spoke to guests relations and their response was "well sometimes they put their headphones in and remove them if a manager is coming, but they will definitely get written up for not wearing a name tag."

It got faster during the second shoot!

I'm not sure why you would even bother comparing TNTG to this. I haven't ridden the former but I can tell that its going to provide a more powerful and intense experience. I personally love the coaster. It's not a top 10 favorite of mine but it definitely provides some unique sensations due to the element transitions and the openness of the cars. Hoping to get a few more rides today!

Mine are now not letting me try anymore. "Maximum number of downloads limit was reached." Eeek. Trying my best not to interrupt your cruise, Robb - just keeping you updated on the problem.

Having the same issues. I purchased many and could only get one to download. That one won't play in Quicktime, iTunes, or VLC.

Is it in more than one thread?

OMG the scenery is just beautiful! I need to go!

It sucks when you live hours away from your closest friends – it especially makes planning roller coaster trips a lot harder. Josh and I had never been to Carowinds due to the fact that its kind of a far trip from Cleveland and their coaster collection has always seemed rather mediocre. We used the addition of Intimidator as an excuse to visit the park and pick up a bunch of new credits. Josh decided to fly into Charlotte from Cleveland and I left for the 7 hour drive from Nashville at midnight (central time). I made great time getting into Charlotte (only 6 hours!) and managed to sneak in a nap while waiting for Josh’s flight. We had planned to get to the park at just around opening but Josh had absentmindedly booked his flight with a PM departure instead of an AM departure. Luckily US Airways had one (!!!) seat left on a 8:55 am flight out of Cleveland. I ended up having to wait longer for him and we didn’t get to the park until around 11:15, but everything worked itself out. The first ride we approached was Nighthawk, which had about an hour wait. We mistakenly took this as a bad sign of how lines were going to be for the rest of the day. However, elsewhere in the park, all rides were walk-ons. The ride experienced some “technical difficulties”, but opened up after about ten minutes. We boarded the train and sat down in the sweat-soaked seats. Disgusting and slimy! The ride was very reminiscent of X-hawk, though it seemed to possess a more severe rattle. We took the back corner of the park by storm and rode all of the attractions, including Drop Tower, in about 45 minutes. Hurler was probably the slowest wooden coaster I have EVER been on. That first turn after the drop really seems to slow the ride down, providing absolutely no airtime for the rest of the ride. It was a completely unenjoyable experience. Ricochet was a standard wild mouse, with an inappropriate coastal theme. The best part of that coaster was that we had the opportunity to run into Justin Bieber while queuing! OMG! Carolina Cyclone turned 30 this year and there are signs nearby commemorating the event. The ride itself is pretty smooth during its second half. The paintjob, however, is awful! It looks like it was painted by a 10 year old playing RCT. Having ridden Iron Wolf two years back, we expected Vortex to be an unpleasant experience. We were surprised to find that it’s very smooth – in the front seat at least. It was probably one of the most enjoyable standups I have ever experienced, up there with Chang and Scorcher. We were excited to try out the newer trains on our relocated coaster, Carolina Cobra. The ride itself is still boring, but the trains make it much more bearable. The transitions still rattle the head, but the lack of actual headbanging is a big plus. We grabbed lunch at the Country Kitchen cafeteria-style restaurant. The turkey and two side dishes came out to be about 10 bucks. Josh was about to spend 4 bucks on bottled water, but the cashier said, “Hey, I’ll give you a free water!” and handed us both LARGE size cups of water. It was pretty sweet but I’m not sure he’s allowed to do that! We allowed our food to settle with a ride on Boo Blasters on Boo Hill. I’ve ridden Scooby Doo at Kings Dominion and Kings Island and, in my opinion, the ride loses nothing with the loss of the Scooby characters. It’s still just as interactive and there are actually a couple of scary effects; I jumped when a ghost popped out from around the corner! Afterburn totally surprised us with its intensity. That loop is huge and the G’s between it and the immelman are grey-out forceful (in the back), something I have never experience on an inverted before. It was definitely the best coaster of the day! I’ve been on rough wooden coasters before, but Thunder Road was rough in a different way – the shuffling was unbearable on the return run! I’ve never felt a ride shuffle up and down on the track like that before. It was pretty enjoyable on the way out, with great airtime on the smaller hills. We took a spin on the kiddie coasters and were actually able to solicit some kids to ride Lucy’s Crabby Cabby with us. It was nice to get that extra credit since Goldrusher was down all day. If you have long legs and jeans on, be prepared to get rust stains on them from the lap bars on Woodstock Express’ trains. The park was so dead that Intimidator had only a 3 train wait for the front seat. Is this normal for Carowinds to be this dead? If so, how do they deserve a B&M hyper?? The ride starts off pretty good with a great first drop and a really cool turn on the second hill. What sucks is that the ride is pretty much killed by the trims on the hill right after the turn around. It literally crawls over the rest of the hills and meanders through the turn after the midcourse – a serious disappointment! I know B&M hypers aren’t generally the most intense rides, but come on! It was so slow! We rode both in the front and back seats, with the back being better during the first half of the ride and no difference on the sluggish second half. And this ride is themed to a racecar driver? It was neat when the Intimidator ride-ops announced that on July 4th, Cedar Fair parks with B&M hypers would be having a capacity contest – with shoutouts to Behemoth and Diamondback! Of course, we started chanting “Diamondback! Diamondback! Diamondback!” with no response or participation from the local crowd. The ride-ops enjoyed it, though. We took a few pictures of our day. The sky was overcast pretty much all day but it was still really hot out. Lighting wasn’t really the best for pictures, but we only had a point and shoot anyways. Aww this nice woman is enjoying herself sitting and texting in her Sketcher's shapeups. I would support her right to relax... ...if she weren't ruining our picture of the park's marquee!! I guess you could say this is the reason we came here. Deciding whether or not we wanted to wait an hour for Nighthawk. The best part of the ride! This part looks a lot better than it really is. This seemed to be the roughest part of the ride. The observation tower here is pretty attractive. Better looking than a lot of others I have seen. Nice butt!! Oh, the girl's is nice too. Josh doing his best Wilson from Home Improvement impression while queuing for Nighthawk. The maps seem to be one panel shorter this year... Vortex from the Nighthawk queue! Coca Cola Oasis < Pepsi Oasis Happy Birthday Carolina Cyclone!!! Really ugly paintjob! Though we weren't excited to ride Head Spin, we were intrigued with the new trains. Somebody pissed off Justin Bieber! He looks pretty salty. Just hanging out at the Rock Shop with Josh and his bia. She wanted to have some fun with us. Captain Josh boarding his bird! Afterburn = Awesome! That really is a big loop! Love the shot, Josh! We actually had trouble finding the entrance to this ride. Apparently this ride has trouble with bees and wasps during the late summer and fall... Pretty cool swooping turn element. Going SO SLOW. Nice hair, dude! Just celebrating Dale, I suppose.

Looks like a nice little park. Haven't been, but I'll definitely hit it up this fall when I'm in Buffalo. Looks like you had a blast hanging out by yourself, Josh!! No log flume love? WHAT GIVES?!

^^ You better hurry up!!!!

HN attendance list- 1. Nick (angryemobeaver {actually DropZone99 on every other site}) 2. Adam (spaceace12) 3. Nathan (kumba830) 4. Joel(10ryansmith) 5. Justin (RedB) 6. Brandon (saginawhxc) 7. Stefan (VGplay) 8. Dimitri (VoltageCaek) 9. Alex (WildStangAlex) 10. Joe (JEAPUgrad on TPR, Great_Ump on URC) 11. Josh (CoasterBoyJosh) 12. Griffin (GriffyTiffy) 13. Andrew (AndCamSS) 14. Kyle (britishdebutante)

Coasterboy from Z100's syndicated morning talk show Elvis Duran and the Morning Show interviewed Paul Darrio from Universal about the Wizarding World of Harry of Potter. This is Coasterboy's first video blog in a hopefully long series of fun and interesting looks at the amusement industry. It's always good to see coaster enthusiasm make its way to the mainstream. Oh yeah, Coasterboy is also a TPR member. Visit http://elvisduran.com/pages/video/mainplayer.html?uri=channels/413811/901242 to check out the video!

^^ THIS JUST IN: The smoke cloud from the smoldering Son of Beast ride at Kings Island causes massive disruptions in air traffic across the continent.

You're right! We were so caught up in our dreams of burning down SOB that we all failed to realize that there could be disastrous consequences for the rest of the park!

^ I think that's CoasterboyJosh's point: that most people don't think about or don't know what they are ingesting. I had never even heard of trans-fats before all the news about them a few years back. So, it does make sense for the government to oversee this stuff and protect the public. It's sad, but there a ton of people out there who rely on fast food as their main diet either because it's convenient or because it's cheap. Are trans-fats (or empty calories, fat, etc...) truly detrimental to the health of the occasional fast food eater? Probably not, but it's the frequent fast food eaters that are benefiting from the government's intervention. After all, the CDC has labeled diabetes as an epidemic, and wouldn't you expect the government to step in during any other epidemic? As far as knowing the details of what you're putting in your mouth, it's fairly easy to skim the nutrition facts on the back of anything you put in your cart at the grocery store. I've found myself doing this more ever since moving out and making all my own decisions about what I was eating. I'm not saying I live my life by these labels, but it's definitely steered me towards better products of the same type before.