chadster

I could ride patriot all day, it has a nice air time hump over the station to kind of spice things up a bit.

Wow, it's been forever since I have been there and it looks fantastic. The one thing on your shots you must be mindful of is the sun, especially if you have the camera on "auto" as it will underexpose your shot. Be sure to square up the shot (level) and always offset the main subject a little to the left or right. For speed shots with sunlight and little blur, keep it around 1/1000 f16 (if you have it) film speed around 400 maybe even 800, if you want a sillouhette shot, get the sun behind it and go for 1/250 or below f8 film speed 200-100 should be nice. Photoshop is also your friend...bottom line, you just have to take multiple shots of the same subject in the same manner at different settings if you are going for manual mode, keep a small notebook and write down your settings correlated to the pic #, each camera is a little different so you have to find it's sweet spot.

here is the funny part, if you buy it online, you can get a season pass for 36.00 good for frontier city only.

Ok, so to wrap it up, small park, not many thrill rides, a few rides closed, owned by PARC. Price to get in without coupon, 36.99 +8.00 to park. Price to get in with coupon 20.00, total cost, less than 30.00 with parking which is about the correct price point for this park, I doubt i would pay 36.99 to get in, 25 or 29, yes. The staff who actually talked were nice, most of the ride ops didn't talk. The park had automated messages for each ride. Food selection was somewhat thin today, pizza, nachos, hot dogs, beer, and pepsi. Season cup, 8.99, refills 1.50. Great for families or nostalgia purposes. Overall, I would give the park about a 7/10.

for a coupon, here is the link www.travelok.com/printable-coupons ok, so I am coming to the end, a total of 4 rides closed. Hangman, Erruption, the enterprise wheel, and the tilt a whirl (name may not be accurate) good to know former go carts building rapids ride old go cart track closed due to tree maintenance place to hide your go cart time to go, it's hot and I've rode everything in the park that was open in 2 hours, so a shot of diamond back from the parking lot noted old go cart track from back of park again in case you ever wondered what Sonic HQ looked like, here it is in bricktown (DT OKC)

Got bored and had a need to ride a coaster or two. I hadn't been to Frontier city since 2000 when Six Flags still owned it. Being a club member I noted the 16.99 discount (basically kids admission price) and decided it was worth the turnpike fee and gas for a short trip. Being fathers day (6.20.10), and factoring in that it was hot as he!!, the park was very dead, maybe 100 cars in the lot, good for me, bad for the park. So, here is my adventure to a small family amusement park, no big thrill rides here, (B&M, Intamin, S&S) but a good park for family. **Edit, I'm an idiot, I didn't read the benefit's thread, only the join page benefits page, I should've read the thread, could've got said discount through link on thread, note to all, read the thread** It's so hot the devil couldn't stand it, so I packed my ice chest, I really should peel that factory sticker off, but why, it gives it character, never mind that stuff in the background...... uggghhh, turnpike...5 bucks each way please time to pony up, you can't see him, but there is a hi-po on "seat belt enforcement" duty ahead on the left, yes, there are signs telling you that a seat belt enforcement unit is ahead and we have arrived, 8.00 to park please, it was funny, the lady taking money was getting rained on by the A/C in the booth, at least I thought it was funny diamond back first sign of a small park? a small ticket office, and they wouldn't take my Club TPR card for the advertised discount because as noted above I was an idiot and didn't read the thread and had to get it online. Luckily, I had a coupon, will post a link to it at the end. the entrance to diamond back is from the central giftshop, which you also have to go through to get inside the park or exit the park, smart I think, get 'em coming and going, lol this ride was supposedly park of another coaster that was taken apart, when they brought it here, it something went amiss and they made it into this. That's the legend anyway off we go...see the winch up on the left, that's needed when the train won't come back like it's supposed to.... natural spring time for a pirate ship pirate ship control panel pirate ship warning, noted. hmmm, verkoma death machine?? nope, it's a nice family coaster, really, it's smooth, not jerky, well done. short lift hill i like the harness on this one on to silver bullet, down for a bit of maintenance coming back from testing look close, push mechanism coming push mechanism locked and ready weeeeeeee wildcat, steel frame, wood track, control panel lift hill the fountains at the end of the ride were working weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee station, empty. One train, used to have two, at the top of the dip is a break run, it then goes down a hill to another break section before coming to load/unload. Silve bullet at one time had two trains, that was a loooonnggg time ago. closed this was a great interactive shooting ride, ride a dark ride car throughout and shoot stuff, one of the guns in my car didn't work, fortunately, by msyelf, I had a spare. closed hmmmmm, found this by wildcat, only one I saw, but there could be more, don't even know if it exists or not... log flume, long line, only three logs that I saw were running.... but i think i found out why they've turned them into planters horses geez, more planters look, a log, on the flume ride, they do exist! the line was at least 30 minutes, now we know why.... mini train tracks big wheel traffic jam on the turnpike games and stuff, closed. closed did i mention the park was dead, it was also clean hmmm, sun, check, no wind, check, no clouds, check, hot, check, not worky, check found some guys doing lanscaping around erruption, it's a no charge ride at this park, it's also an out of order ride. the erruption chamber yep, I'll continue in a second

That's it, i'm saving my penny's for TPR's next go at Europe, I can't believe I missed out on riding the gator...

^ maybe they should time them to music and lights and have a mini lake Bellagio

Mantis is a nice ride, only problem I have is if I ride it too much, my ears feel like they've been 12 rounds in a boxing ring...

I have ridden many of the batman "clones" and find them very exciting. I rode the particular version you speak of 24 times in a row during ERT, the only issue I had was feeling light on my feet after getting off. The next day I grabbed 15 rides, still no grey outs, strain, etc. It's a great ride, but no where as near as intense as Montu IMO. A quick check of the RCDB doesn't show the G's on the version in question, but others show 4 G's, Montu is 3.8 G's with 7 inversions, the most of any inverted coaster which adds to the intensity IMO. Patriot being my all time favorite, only has 4 inversions, a longer track length, and to me is like a walk in the park, a relaxing ride that has the perfect mix of intensity and pleasure, kinda like s......I'm sharing too much...

^^^^ look around, maybe on page 457 of this post.....

Kings Dominion is a good park, but will be packed depending on the day of the week you go, weather, etc. BGW is by far the best amusement experience I've had, I booked a tour (check out my TR for info on all 3 parks you are thinking about) http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=55255&start=0 which also gave me front of the line access to the coasters afterwards. If you are worried about waiting in line for coasters, BGW offers quick que passes for an additional charge, basically the way their QQ works is they rope off a row on the train (no not the front row, usually the second row from the front or back with the exception of Griffon) and you go to a special line and walk on. It's a very well maintained park and the staff are great. Hershey on the other hand is also a nice park, more rides the BGW and has the make your own candy bar factory for an additional fee. The water park included in the admission is another nice feature. The park is also well kept, but as i think was mentioned above, has more of an amusement park feel. Overall you will walk about the same in either park to see and do everything. BGW also has some excellent food choices, pricing is equiv to restaurant pricing. It sounds like you are wanting to try out a few rides at Hershey, so might as well go for it if you really want it, you won't be disappointed. You won't be disappointed with BGW either, just keep in mind KD will probably be the busiest of all of them. oh, and welcome to the site

Wow, I very much like discovering smaller parks I never knew existed, which is why I love this site, thanks for the PTR, I'll have to put this one on the bucket list.

maybe it's their solution for wheel de-lamination? cool them down sort of like the cable on Top Thrill? hmmm, nice find, I am intrigued

i found the picture of the refill stations interesting, so I did a little internet searching and found that alton towers and thorpe park use a "refill station" basically, for say 5.00 you buy a coca cola refillable bottle and can refill it at any of a number of places throughout the park. Maybe this is a similar concept. At KD you pay 5.00 for drinks all day in a souviner cup, don't remember if that holds true at KI or not, but sure someone else here does. http://www.towerstimes.co.uk/parkinfo/food.htm

uniform color codes... I saw green and blue in the pictures posted of the markings indicating water and sewer, now when the pink and white show up, it's jump up and down time....

Having ridden many of the hydraulic intamins, I found Ka to be much less intense than Top Thrill or Storm Runner. As others have said, sitting towards the front you don't feel it as much as sitting in the rear. Just remember, with those crazy over the shoulder restraints, you are not going to fall out. If you are worried about anything breaking or falling out, put it in a locker for a buck and then loop the key around your belt loop, you'll be just fine. Heck, I was stuck at the top of drop tower at KD for twenty minutes and I'm still here.

I can't answer all of your questions but can answer some of them. The park opens at 10:30, the safari opens at 9am so that might help make up your mind if you want to drive thru it. It is a drive thru attraction and some of the animals will walk up to your vehicle, its cool if you are in to getting personal with wildlife. As far as taking pictures, you'll be able to get several nice ones of batman from various positions inside movie town, superman is best from the line queue in my opinion. Ka is a little difficult to get anything good from outside the queue (best position is near the flash pass entrance outside the queue, walk around a bit by it and you will find a good spot), so I would suggest trying to get a few of it from the queue as well or better yet, from the bridge connecting both sides. If you are driving around safari during testing of bizzaro you should be able to get some nice ones, El Toro has been done a few times and many are posted on this site, the easiest being of the first drop, just walk under it towards Bizzaro. If I remember correctly, you won't be able to get too much coaster action from the skyway. Nitro is also a little tough to get good pictures of because of the location, but it can be done if you scout out the parking situation, just don't expect to be able to get it all from a single location unless you're in a helicopter. After re-adjusting your back on rolling thunder, head over to the scream machine to put it back in place, inside the queue will get you some nice loop pics, as well as just outside the entrance. You will have fun, it's a great park, lacking somewhat in flat thrill rides, but the staff is friendly and helpful. The shops and arcade are all air conditioned so be sure to take advantage of that if it gets hot, or just hop on the rapids, it'll cool you down.

No need for explanation, guess I should have been more clear and said that the angle of the picture wasn't good enough for me to tell... I suppose you could have enough room up front, and i do agree they have gotten creative, but I still think MaxAir will play into the picture given it's span when swinging around. All we know for sure is that they have ordered something, as for what, and from whom, guess we will only know when they make an offical annoucment, start pouring footers, or track arrives in the parking lots. Sure we can speculate and hope the word "dive" out of the big man's mouth has signifigance, but until we see it....

I had forgotten about Mt. Olypmus, thanks for the pics, I must add this to my personal credit whoring trip next year.

considering they were still laying the pathways on Monday, I have to say, I am impressed that it opened on time. thanks for the update.

so I'm looking at the park map, and taking heights into consideration with other rides in the area, I have to think if a dive coaster were to be installed, it would be installed in the back of the park around Mean Streak and the gemini, plus if need be you have a little parking lot out back you can dig into. The two B&M Dive coasters use scoops on the back of the train to slow it down through the water to make the turn to the station, if it were a cookie cutter of sorts and the park ordered a dive coaster and was adament it didn't have trims and wanted the cool attribute, they would need room for the pool( of course a large up hill could do the trick too). BG has three different scoop angles they can choose from, one of which sprays water a good 100 feet away which is why they don't use that angle of attack. I just don't see the room up front. Another item to point out is that all the "wet" rides are towards the back of the park, keeping them together actually makes sense, and if the pool effect were decided upon, well, there you go. Plus, the only real big draw to the back of the park is Maverick, adding another headliner to the back would draw the crowds that way. Up front you have MaxAir to deal with, you can easily avoid the sky ride and the observation tower, however you'd have to build around the flying fresbie. But...wouldn't it be cool if they built it up front and have enough clearance between MaxAir and the rumored dive coaster to where you feel like your gonna smack the train from MaxAir? CF may also be concerned with apperance on the midway. Honestly, I see a spinning dragon or the sorts being put where demon drop was. compact and easy to install. capacity would be greater than demon drop as well... these are just my opinions and observations... **Edit** screamscape had some pics of new B&M track, tho you can't tell really what type it is, i.e. invert, dive, hyper)

Fantastic PTR, thank you. I think I have learned my lessons on parks with new rides (tho not as a result of STR, I came to this conclusion many years ago on trips to various parks turned disapponting due to the needed tweaking on new rides and as a result the ride being closed). I usually plan to go the year following the advertised ride opening to let the parks get all the kinks worked out if a partcular ride is the reason for my travels. I saw where STR will not be open this week either, big disappointment for sure for those who planned their vacations to ride it, however, as you so well pointed out, there are many other terrific coasters at CP and a few good flat rides by HUSS and S&S as well. I will admit, I made an exception and rode Prowler on Media/Preview day, and that was totally awesome.

To me, the turn after the drop was just as intense as before, but still, no "blackout" for me. I did find that if you ride in the front car, the feeling of the train wanting to break free is almost not noticable, sitting towards the rear, the trims are much more noticable in my opinion. I think they are going to find that the turn after the drop *might* end up being too intense for many people to handle well, but still, there was no shortage of people willing to wait hours on hours to ride it over Memorial Day weekend. I watched them replace the wheels on one of the trains pre-trims on the drop. What was interesting was this particular train was making a horrendous noise and they were still letting people ride it. Maintenance eventually took it off the track and began repairs, almost as if they had done it a time or two

Thanks for the clarrification on SFA, knowledge is power. Capitalize - I will agree the first drop and turn are nice elements, it's the two straight sections that kill it for me, sort of like the multiple straight sections on The Beast at KI. Regardless, I will still ride them both if they happen to be in front of me Here is a spread sheet of my opinions of each of the parks I visited, while I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, it may be useful or at the least, interesting to others. Hope to meet up with a TPR event next year, possibly the bay area bash, that would be cool.