greenspandan

To be blunt, it hurts my balls. the soft straps hurt your balls? where exactly do you keep them?

well, i've never ridden Intimidator 232, but here's what i wrote (on another board) comparing i305 to Millennium Force: for what it's worth, i was describing i305 in its current configuration. i never got to ride the trimmed version, but its current form is definitely much better than the original version with hard straps.

i305 was improved by the softer restraints, and the re-profiled first turn apparently allows it to actually operate at full speed without demolishing its wheels in the process.

it's about bored people posting on the internet

there is a person who prefers an SLC to Volcano?? wow. it takes all kinds, i guess.

i305 definitely changes this conversation but since this is the KD thread, i'll go ahead and root for the home team. i vote KD!

question: in general, do coasters gain in the rankings over time as more people ride them, or do they generally debut at their highest point and then gradually fade as the hype shifts to newer rides? i wonder if i305 could move even higher once more people experience its current (outstanding) configuration.

where's KD?

obviously which park is "better" is totally a matter of opinion. so here's mine: - KD has the greatest and most intense coaster on the planet. - BGW has 3 phenomenal world-class coasters. - KD has so many coasters that it's actually a challenge to ride them all in one day, and each one offers something fun and unique. - BGW is almost inarguably a more beautiful place. it'd be tough for me to choose between the two. either place is a guaranteed awesome time!

went to KD on monday. oh wow. i am still in awe. you know, I've ridden all the coasters that normally show up in peoples' top 5, and in my opinion i305 now surpasses them all in terms of intensity and pure enjoyment. so much airtime and speed throughout the entire course! it never lets up. i tried the front seat and the back seat and couldn't decide which i preferred. i am leaning towards the back, because of the tremendous air you get over the crest of the lift hill. front seat was amazing too, though, and offered almost as much air time with a better view. decisions, decisions. last time i rode i305 was last April (trimless, hard straps). the softer straps, the redesigned turn, and the reduced trims at the midway point all improve this ride so much over what was already a fantastic ride. i just want to stand up and applaud the job KD and Intamin have done building and then improving this coaster. i305 will make KD an essential destination for coaster enthusiasts for years to come once more people experience it in the current configuration -- of that i have no doubt. its reputation will grow with every new visitor. By the way, it was an absolutely beautiful day. maybe a little hot in the late afternoon, but until about 3:30, it was 70 degrees and cloudy. just perfect. and the park looked great. other notes: - loved the new paint and logo on shockwave. - glad to see the ivy crawling back up and beginning to fill out a bit on the arched thingy over the walkway near Grizzly. - i305 was somewhere between walk-on and 15 minute wait all day. heaven. the park wasn't empty, but it wasn't crowded either. - my daughter (3 years old) rode her first rollercoaster ever: Taxi Jam! (also allowed me to pick up that elusive Taxi Jam credit!)

shockwave's first drop is pretty awesome if you're seated anywhere near the back of the train. and i love going limp and letting my arms and legs fly forward during the negative 5G brake at the end!

true, but it's aged better than Anaconda, in my opinion.

if they did that, they'd need some sort of transport ride in my opinion. a train or a skyride or underground pneumatic tubes or matter transporters or something.

looks great!

drop tower fills me with more dread than any roller coaster!

How many here actually remember it from the pre Paramount era? It would be nice to see that kind of retro turnaround......I really miss the park from those times and the amount of "fun" that was all around. Maybe it is just my inner child talking, but it just seemed a lot nicer then..... bring back the skyride, the old dominion line, and, most importantly, the singing mushrooms! maybe i'm just being nostalgic, but it seems like back in the hanna-barbera days, the park was filled with a lot more weird, exotic, inexplicable sights for a kid to find magic in. i don't mean to knock cedar fair -- it's a just a difference in philosophy, i suppose, and i couldn't be more grateful for i305 and Dominator. my 3 year old daughter will be visiting kings dominion this spring. it will be very interesting! we've been watching youtube videos, and she can't stop talking about Taxi Jam! reminds me of when i was her age, and i couldn't wait to ride the monorail safari and hug Yogi Bear and ride those red and green slide things while sitting on a burlap sack... My uneducated theory is that the new super-beefy track with the double spine and conical ties is so rigid that it vibrates and sways less than previous designs, and therefore absorbs less kintetic energy from the train; the practical upshot being that the train retains more energy (speed) throughout the course than Intamin's physics models typically account for. but that's just a guess. whatever the reason, it's totally understandable that there would be a learning process, since it was the first coaster (as far as i know) to open with this type of track (beating Formula Rossa by ~9 months) and only the third giga-coaster in the world (and first of its type). i am so psyched to have this unique beast just an hour from my house.

true enough, although i wonder if you are projecting other peoples' criticism of TPR on to my post. i don't think you did anything wrong, and i voted for i305 anyway. i certainly didn't mean to criticize you or TPR. i honestly meant no offense and apologize for any perceived. i was really just attempting to make the observation that doing an anonymous internet poll with an award attached to the winner is always going to generate drama (and i acknowledged that that's what about.com was going for in the first place). the poll was for fun. it bums me out when people get worked up over these things.

i'm glad i305 won -- it's my favorite ride, after all. but doing anonymous internet polls to decide award winners (of any kind) has got to stop. there are several reasons it's a bad idea. for one thing, it inevitably leads to the kind of petty bickering we saw during this poll, plus who can manage to get the most people to press a button the most times is hardly a valid determiner of a ride's quality. besides, anonymous internet polls are just far too easy to subvert. if i were so inclined, i could have written a script in half an hour that could stuff the ballot box at a semi-random pace of my choosing by rotating IPs (or generating fake cookies, or whatever -- don't care enough to reverse engineer about.com's poll code, but the point is it'd be simple). for all i know, someone on one side or the other may have done just that. anyway, in the future, i'd like to see sites abandon these kinds of polls as determiners of any kind of award. there are lots of better options: - have a committee of people with informed opinions come to consensus or vote. - have a poll of registered users only, as opposed to anonymous browsers. - just pick a winner and go with it. although on the other hand, i suppose about.com got what they wanted -- tens of thousands more page impressions than they would have received without the random, anonymous, meaningless poll. oh well, all in good fun.

I dont know how opening day is, but I went the first sunday of the season last year and the park was practically empty! Short (15 minutes maybe) line for volcano, and waits for intimidator were at times less than 5 minutes. i was there that same day. it was like heaven. a brand new giga-coaster with a 5-minute wait!

waaat

today is the last day of voting i believe.

i305 is the goateed, evil, mirror universe twin of Millennium Force. i305 is Millennium Force with a bad case of PMS.

how does the Carowinds coaster seem to get hundreds of votes at once seemingly on demand? they're up by almost 200 votes all of a sudden.

basically, the first turn is wider and angles upward towards the first hill.

Really? With the cost of gas, I'd think that'd about double the cost of the meal. especially since there's a chik-fil-a inside the park.