Skycoastin Steve

I 100% agree on Phantom. It blew me away when I first rode it two years ago when I wasn't really expecting it to, and it blew me away again this year. The back row is out of control.

I felt like I was a little off my game taking pictures here, but it was really hard to get good angles on the coasters. Either way, here are some of the better shots! Woohoo! I can already tell I'm going to have fun! I would agree! I was loving the trucks that pulled the trams around. *applause* First ride of the day was a good one on the Flyer! A few Flying Turns pictures. Definitely looks like it'll be a neat ride when it finally opens. Twister! The turns before the 2nd lift and 1st drop were more intense than I anticipated. The more you know! Double helix of extreme death! Fun stuff. Upskirt lift hill porn! Really good first drop. Enough of those laterals, time to get thrown up out of my seat! So much fun. Too bad more of the layout isn't visible from the midway. I think all the mentions of upskirt coaster porn is how this site gets flagged as porn in other countries........ Only place to get a picture of the first drop. Fancy! Weeee!!! Chain lift wheel geek shot. Time for a look at Black Diamond. Lots of track work has been done. Triple lift hill!! 10 bucks says this opens before Flying Turns. I agree! Some of the collisions I experienced felt like real car crashes. Log jam! Fun pirate ship ride. Something about the simplicity and pure fun factor of really old rides just makes me happy. Almost made me throw up, which never happens! Fairly acceptable amount of wetness. This however....... .....is not. Leisurely ride up the Sky Ride. Phoenix from above. Twister from above. Giant Wheel from above. Kozmo's Kurves from above. I actually skipped this credit, the line was wayyyyy too long. Loved the Carousel! Also fun! A little back story. My mom has made homemade whoopie pies for us since we were little kids, so getting a frozen, GIANT whoopie pie was nothing short of perfect for me. Awwwwww...... The babies are UGLY though. I got your locker right here! Goodbye Knoebel's!

So the day after Kennywood I made it up to Knoebel's and had yet another fantastic day! Knoebel's had to be one of the most unique parks I've ever been to, but in a good way! It was just a throwback to the "old days" and felt so much more genuine than most parks do these days. But enough of that, the reason I came was for the two epic woodies in Phoenix and Twister! Twister was really, really good, but beat me to death. I think my ribs were already sore from Thunderbolt the day before, but that double helix was REALLY aggressive, as were most of the other under-banked turns on the course. However, it's still currently ranked in my top 15 woodies, so I definitely enjoyed it. But four laps were more than enough for me. On to Phoenix, and I gotta say, even with all the hype, I was still thinking the airtime couldn't be that great on this thing. Boy was I wrong. It just made me laugh nonstop every time I rode it. It was just ridiculous how much airtime there was on that coaster. Four of my five rides were in the front of the train, as my back car ride wasn't that great. However, the front of the train was INSANE! It was a tad bit rougher than I thought it would be, but then again, it's older than Jeff Johnson. I ended up putting it at #7 on my woodie list. As for the rest of the park, I was really just geeking out over the old feel of it and the "fair" atmosphere it had. I had some of their world famous pizza, and I gotta say, it was spectacular. I also got a chocolate milkshake and a frozen whoopie pie, which were just about the greatest things ever. As far as the other rides are concerned, I rode the bumper cars (holy SH*T!), the log flume (very fun!), Downdraft (better than expected!), the Whipper (fantastic old ride), the Flyer (snapping FTW!), Fandango (poor man's Maxair, but still good), the Galleon (pirate ship), as well as the Sky Ride to get a nice view of the park from above. All in all, this is definitely a park I'll be visiting again in the future, just so I can do a lot of the things I missed out on this time around. Fun day! Pictures are in the next post.

Had a chance to catch some spectacular pictures at the park tonight. We had one of the prettiest sunsets I've seen in a very long time, and I couldn't let the opportunity pass! Hurler as seen from the Sky Flyer flightline. What used to be an airtime hill. Flyers! Drop Tower. Screamweaver. Cyclone. Sunset. Amazing. Cyclone again. Can you spot the flyers? Hurler. Drop Tower dropping. Screamweaver. Just about my favorite picture I've ever taken.

Fantastic flick. I need to see it again.

As long as the shoot the chutes ride was named "Unacceptable Wetness."

^Nope. PointBuzz wrote the book on psychotic fanboyism (and then KDFansite rewrote it and added a few chapters). There are TONS more rational and lucid posters on TPR than PointBuzz. Sure, there are fanboys on here, but to even suggest that this site is like PointBuzz is laughable. Believe me, I used to post on there.

Anything to mess with PointBuzz would be classic.

^^Call me crazy, but I don't think they were going for a high thrill ride with STR, so I'm not entirely sure why people keep judging it as if it were supposed to be one.

Once again, that moronic blog got people jacked up again. I could easily go get a wooden stake, tie a ribbon around it, shove it in the ground somewhere around here at Carowinds, and then post it and tell people it's a construction marker. Are people really that gullible?

Der Fallinfast!

Time for pictures! Full album can be found here on facebook. Passing by Heinz Field while driving through Pittsburgh. Kennywood! Phantom's Revenge! Yay! The "bungee ride." Of all the idiotic things the GP say, calling a Skycoaster a bungee ride is far and away (like the distance from Pluto to the Sun) the #1 thing that annoys me. Thunderbolt's entrance painting. Cool station front. Everything at this park is cool! Maybe the only woodie with more intense laterals than Legend? SQUISH!! Now that's what I'm talking about. Why are ugly rides so photogenic? First drop upskirt! What a great drop, crazy intense! ohhhh, fancy shot Probably the best alternative I've seen to throwing gum on the ground. You get points! Airtime hair! Phantom fountain action. Through the.........TRACK! ohhhhhhhhh another fancy schmancy shot Jen says the guy in the front has jazz hands hahahaha Artsy fartsy, fancy schmancy, oozy schmoozy shot. More airtime hair! THROUGH THE TREES!!!! Now a moment to talk about how much I love S&S Screamin' Swings. I LOVE THEM. shhhhooooossssshhhhhhhhhhh KERSPLOOSH!!!!!1!1!one!!!1!!!111onehundredeleleven!!! So I don't get it. Are we exterminating bugs or gremlins? Painful ride. Since you put it that way, I think I'll keep my hands and feet inside the car! Sky Rocket's in flight! beeeyyyyoooooooooo!!!!!! Airtime-filled barrel rolls. I freakin' loved them. Another very cool element was the cliffhanger. Ok I know zero-g rolls are supposed to feature some semblance of weightlessness (hence the name), but usually they don't. The ones on this ride did. And we're turning...... Nice little airtime pops at the end. I don't know about the rest of the train, but the front row gets some serious ejector air going into the top hat. Also a very smooth coaster. Undercarriage porn! Jack Rabbit! Double down. One of the best moments of airtime you can find anywhere, and the damn thing is almost 90 years old. They sure don't make 'em like they used to! Through the........supports? For some reason I adore this logo. Another fun woodie! The tamest of the three woodies, but still a classic! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Noah's Ark. So bizarre, yet so awesome at the same time. I had to see it with my own eyes, but it appears the French army DID advance on someone one time. Granted they had help, but let's just let them have this one. They did after all just implode at the World Cup. Fantastic log flume. A more acceptable amount of wetness. Skycoasters? Awesome. Sunsets? Awesome. Skycoasters at sunset? Phantom from across the way. Thunderbolt. Phantom's first drop. My night ride on this was spectacular. That 2nd drop goes down into pitch black nothingness. Crazy. No hot chick from Adventureland to be found. Jack Rabbit looks great at night. As does Racer!

Well I just had an absolutely spectacular day at Kennywood yesterday. I'm doing the loner thing for this trip, and it's a shame that nobody else was able to share the fun day with me, but sometimes that's just how it goes! I was able to get a ton of rides in on everything, including Thunderbolt and Racer (which I was only able to ride one time each during my first visit there in 2008). Thunderbolt was actually much, much better than I remember it, and made a pretty good jump in my wooden rankings. As far as the day went, it was a perfect day weather wise out, and I was able to spend the day from open to close. The line for Sky Rocket was long all day, so I only got to ride it twice, but they were both fantastic rides! Kennywood really got a winner with this one. It's fun, still somewhat family-friendly (saw a bunch of kids on it), just quirky and unique enough to fit the park, yet modern and thrilling enough to satisfy the thrill seekers. And smooth! I was very pleased with the ride, and really had no huge complaints (imagine that, a TPR member with no complaints about a new ride). Phantom's Revenge was running amazingly well yesterday, and it actually climbed back into my top 10 above *holdbreathfordramaticeffect*..........Apollo's Chariot, Montu, and Intimidator (which are my top 3 B&Ms). Phantom is just insanely ridicu-nuts and SO much fun. It's one of those rides that you forget how good it is until you go back and ride it again. It has the right mix of intensity, out of control-ness, and airtime that make it a very, very, very high quality coaster. Back row was absolutely heinous. Jack Rabbit continues to be one of my favorite woodies, and the airtime on the double down still makes me laugh every time. I can't even imagine what that ride had to be like when it was first built. People 90 years later think it's a crazy ride, so what did people back then think?!?! Total ride count for the day is as follows: Sky Rocket: 2 Phantom's Revenge: 11 Jack Rabbit: 8 Thunderbolt: 5 Racer: 4 Exterminator: 1 Swing Shot: 3 Log Jammer: 1 Noah's Ark: 1

Rode Sky Rocket twice today and LOVED it! Both of my rides were in the front row, first wait was about 45, second wait was about 35. There were so many unexpected pops of airtime on that ride, and the top hat/cliffhanger element was nuts! Also, the airtime in the inversions was one of the more bizarre feelings I've had on a coaster. You literally float as if you're going over an airtime hill, but then turn it into a barrel roll. Very, very cool. The ending was a bit meh, but overall the best word to describe it is "fun." Since I'm a coaster enthusiast, I'm bound by contractual obligation to bitch and complain about SOMETHING, so I guess my only complaint would be the train design. Not sure what Premier was thinking, but leg room is minimal and the odd height recommendations for each row are really, really strange. It didn't take away from my experience even a little bit, but as I said, I suppose I should find something negative because it's my duty both as an enthusiast and a member of TPR.

Some loops are up to 200 feet tall?

^I'm really not going to make this an argument about GL, but Six Flags tried investing a ton of money into the rides side of the park, and it did absolutely nothing to help the attendance. Regardless of how the park got to the state it was in, I went there in 2007 and there was NOBODY at that park. That was in the dead middle of the summer, and no one was there. The attendance may have been 100 on the rides side, and that's being generous. There's no way that park was making any money. That's what happens when a business no longer makes money, it gets shut down. It sucks, but that's business.

^Yes, that's what happened. They removed the ride vehicle and cables from the ride which eliminated any counterbalance for the three towers. It got a little too cold and a little too windy one night and ker-splat! It snapped and fell over.

This has been an awesome thread! As someone else already mentioned, I love seeing old pictures of parks that have had a lot of change since the pictures were taken, and the CP ones are definitely very cool!

^Enough people try too hard to sound not intelligent (or maybe there's no effort involved), so I gotta level the playing field. But for real. It's steel track. No wood involved. I really don't see how anyone could still consider it wooden track.

^For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's not going to be a wooden coaster anymore.

^Ya know, I didn't think of that. It could have also been some sort of crazy magnetic field put out by 305's trims. Trim voodoo!

In fairness, Drop Tower was down because of wind, but it did finally open for the last few hours of the day. However, Volcano was a major fail. They sent countless empty trains around the circuit, but were never able to open it with people. Not sure what the problem has been with that ride this year. I mean sure it's Intamin, but there's no cable involved!

That's the way I ride all Arrows these days. You really just have to take them for what they are and realize that when they were built, they were THE premier roller coasters in the world. I rarely ever don't enjoy a ride on an Arrow coaster, no matter how rough and uncomfortable they are. Maybe I just enjoy a good throwback.

The article was filled with GP comments. They don't have the slightest idea of what they're talking about. You could tell a guest that the flux capacitor is broken on the ride and they would tell a news crew if it got them on tv/in the papers.

Yeah, if you rode it before the trims, you can definitely feel the difference in speed, but everyone that I was with yesterday said they still thought it was fast as crap. The consensus was they couldn't imagine it going 10-15 mph faster.