bill_s

Yeah they've really lightened up on their camera policy -- NOT. Yesterday they stopped the lift on Nitro and the whole ride, since they stopped loading as well. I hear "oh no it's broken" and I say loudly "probably someone with their phone out" and look behind me and a woman is holding her phone to her, not even using it at that moment. Maybe if she had immediately put it away they would have just started it back up. Instead, without saying anything over a PA that I could hear, they sent someone up to confiscate it while everyone involved waited. Really crowded yesterday compared to past years same day deadness. Toro ran, but one train ops.

Last year I rode Ka in about 38 degrees, it was awesome. Back in 2017, same weekend, was really icy earlier that week and even Nitro was afternoon before it was running. As was Ka, I heard about blowtorches being involved but they got it going eventually too. However, unlike previous years Toro was not running last year for the final weekend. They had bands and an event. I'm hoping the train maintenance earlier this year and not seeing any events is a good sign but will be watching and deciding. Sunday would be my day; they're open Thurs-Mon !

I also wonder how many people would show up on a Sunday night. I don’t think it would be busy enough to make it worth being open most Sunday nights especially for the smaller Cedar Fair parks. KD has dropped all non-Haunt Sundays during the Haunt run probably because they end up dead days. I think it would be a better argument that more popular parks such as CP and KI doesn't need them, but it makes it harder to find a good time to go. I do see CP has a partial Haunt, though with 8 PM close, on Sundays, but didn't find any others that do that. 3 other CF parks -- Dorney, Valleyfair and WoF -- have no Sunday Haunt or only the Columbus Day exception, and MiA has no Haunt at all. The remaining 5 parks have Sundays. 4 of the parks without are in the midwest. May have to do with driving distances for employees and guests. Most employees at KD have a 30-45 min. drive. Sundays were more crowded than Fridays until they started College Nights.

Is there some extreme religious thing in Ohio that causes CP and KI to not have Haunt on Sundays? (exception CP 10/13) Doesn't help the situation for sure.

^^-- their indoor coaster will also be closed! But if they're only going to run 2, they made the right choice. Dominator has great view of the lights and feels more part of the event as a whole than any other coaster I've ridden at a holiday event... and that includes the snow-themed Alpengeist.

I didn't go on a Saturday, but last year neither coaster got a line and RY75 ran with minimal operations. Unless a larger number of the people there ride TT or more people go to the event to ride it, it will probably be one of the best times to get on it.

I think the reason they have Winterfest at all is it draws a different clientele and they tend to spend more per visit. Virginia is colder than Charlotte and they're running rides that they not only won't start up at less than 40 degrees, I know from experience they close (casually -- those in line get to ride) as soon as it drops below. The one they'd go below that last year they're not running this year -- but I am glad they'll be doing something with lots of lower speed thrills. I expect they won't run anything at Carowinds lower than that either. Both cases are better than Christmas Town was back in the day when they only ran one coaster and if it went down for any reason you'd better be feeling the holiday spirit(s). Great Adventure is more daring than SFA, although last time I went and they closed coasters for cold, I admit I wouldn't have made it a lot longer.

A comparison is that Mindbender was 3 months old when its accident happened. Probably wasn't built right and they assumed it was brand new... Meanwhile Chimera is 35 years old and operated for its first 12 years on the German fair circuit before settling for a while in Malaysia, England and Mexico. El Toro Ryan's video from early this year showed the park doing severe trackwork.

There are a lot of enthusiasts in the sense they'll travel a bit to ride a gigacoaster in a good park. Not so many that will make a trip specifically because the new coaster beats a sort-of record by 1 foot or so. I think classifying a coaster due to the drop height is less a cheat than claiming a height when the whole coaster is elevated. E.g. Big Apple isn't really a hyper. But still Magnum is hyper despite the drop being less than 200 feet, partially because they still pushed themselves. Fury isn't nonstop because there's the MCBR itself. The last hills are good but still feel a little tacked on.

^^--my impression was the ratio is 1:1 .

I thought Goliath was fine, when it was open. Not great but not at all rough.

Millennium Force -- pure pleasure, I don't even want to think about how it rates among the gigas Maverick -- although possibly overrated Top Thrill Dragster -- although a pretty bad guest experience overall Magnum XL-200 -- nuts Raptor -- in the running for fave invert Gemini Valravn Rougarou -- powerful ride with a few hiccups Gatekeeper Blue Streak -- solid woody but short Cedar Creek Mine Ride -- really a tie with BS Iron Dragon Corkscrew -- NOT rough but very short Wicked Twister -- flat ride Steel Vengeance -- down all day

The basic style drop towers are as exact a simulation as possible of falling to your death. Coasters connect the drop and airtime moments to a larger whole, and the track, at least, forms what in math is called a continuous function. Also drop towers are often designed so you can't see most of the structure that is holding you up from on the ride.

I see Steel Vengeance is back up. It was down, with a train stuck at the bottom of the lift, all day yesterday and was still down when I stopped watching a little after noon today. I didn't get to ride it. Strategically, I made an error in not getting in line just before close on Sunday night, but was tired and did get a MF night ride, plus it might have gone down then. TTD and Maverick seemed to be the troublemakers until that happened, and I did get to ride them. Should have considered trying to stay in town until early entry today, but really would have felt dumb if I still left before it ran and overall am just happy to be back home ... coulda shoulda but at least the driving's done. I think this park sort of breaks the idea that fastpass has minimal impact on guests without it. It's more of a tier system by ride. If Wicked Twister has a line back to the merge point (at least 45 minutes) you should probably just leave. But every more popular coaster from Raptor up has a tremendous posted wait because the merge point is near or at the station, or Gatekeeper splits at the entrance by side of the coaster, and up to half the throughput is devoted to Fast Lane. And even with FL, I ended up not taking a second ride on TTD as the FL line became longer than my desire to ride it again in the time available. P.S. I think "anonymous user" on queue-times has Fast lane.

Let me clarify, this was fastlane-less in mid August (though mid week)?

Is queue-times accurate for this park? Wait times for the big rides haven't particularly changed since a few weeks ago. The lesser rides I think have improved, perhaps that's just the way that works. There has been some user posts of much shorter lines, but one of those was TTD 5 minutes, which wouldn't have been believable even if the ride was open. By next Monday almost every kid in the country should be in school, so I'm hopeful. But still not sure. Considering driving 2 hours more to skip tolls and save for fastlane, but also I'm doing the 2 half-days plan so that will be only the larger half at best. If it wasn't beautiful I'd be reconsidering very heavily.

Doesn't SOUND like a wooden coaster!

RMCs use rubberized wheels (any exceptions?) so they have to raise the lift or shorten the coaster, and change the elements towards the end to make them more exciting despite the slower speed. Regarding a mobius loop, even if the train could match the original track, the wood side would have to be completely changed. If the wood coaster was El Toro, which uses rubberized wheels, very little would have to be done, but that's unlikely.

I've become sick enough of the complainers ... Coaster goes up hill, speeds up going down hill, etc. They're all somewhat similar. They're pretty awesome unless you're looking for something completely different from that. If you have a giga near you, it may not be worth traveling long distances to ride another, but that is no reason not to build more of them. This one's not super interesting to me because I have 2 giga's closer by. A lot of people don't. Have you that call it cookie cutter ever actually ridden a B&M giga? I found I232 and Fury at Carowinds significantly different, and liked both of them. I don't know if I232's hills are taller but they feel like it. Fury is a much faster paced ride. One thing I see is NO MCBR. Maybe they don't want to make a big deal out of that because they can't promise it will never have a trim brake but this is different. Candymonium also will have no true MCBR but a kind of weird heavy brake followed by a banked turn into the final brake. Orion does look a bit short and doesn't seem to be trying to outdo the other giga's, but that has to happen sometime. They still build coasters less than 300 feet you know. By my standards that's still kind of negative, but it's better. Re: your "Parks shouldn't be building coasters for enthusiasts" I fully understand my preference isn't the same as their's. * * * Oh snap, CF now will have 4 parks with both hyper and giga, who's next? maybe one with a giga already?

People have been complaining about them since before GCI or RMC existed, so those don't count. Intamin and B&M definitely have made rides as bad (at least after getting some age on them) but they didn't go and make a bunch of identical copies of those rides. I wouldn't call anything Vekoma did worse than most Arrows either, but except for the Corkscrews, which way predated Vekoma, they didn't duplicate those either. I think it's more that people like to complain, or make fun of things, and others bought into the outrageous claims. It's pretty disgusting. Some of the old coasters could hurt you if you let them get you, which might be a valid reason to hate them, except every coaster that did that to me I came back to and rode many more times. Some of those who are big name enthusiasts of course do have reason to skip lesser rides, because they just go on to another park of their coaster tour, but normal people don't have that luxury, if that's really even a better thing than enjoying what is there best you can.

I don't think the standup is a flawed concept at all, I just think that the Togos were their pinnacle. They were small enough to need the gimmick, did every motion desirable on a standup (plus a couple less desirable), and were the right length. If only you could have then immediately been allowed to exit instead of standing there. B&M killed the genre through having no redeeming value combined with the public attitude they could do no wrong and Togo could do nothing right. If B&M actually rode a Togo without the our shit don't stink attitude, refined the good and avoided the bad, they could still be making them. One ride on Nighthawk and you should have a fairly complete list of what's good and bad about flying coasters. Swooping over the lake, excellent, all the tumble dryer stuff, awful. Add to that the airtime pop on Superman going into the pretzel loop, wonderful, and almost everything else about it, horrendous. And yet later designs learned little or nothing.

You could probably do that in the last 3-4 hours of the day, or 2.5 hours on Monday. If you're leaving early though, I suggest going TT and then to FoF. Only the last 15-20 minutes of its queue is fully air conditioned and you're outside if over 30 min.

I think normalcy is a game and weird as anyone, but I guess we need some of it. Plus, most people have their own interests and "thing". But its not just that. I expect many adults have little idea how much coasters have progressed. It was simply impossible to ride this stuff when I was a kid, by many decades. It's amazing how many people when I mention Kings Dominion immediately talk about the Time Shaft. The last time they went there it was still open! And even then it wasn't the most memorable ride in the park except for puking. I expect the first thing most adults think of about amusement parks is hot, crowded and expensive, none of which it has to be. If they went with their kids and enjoyed it, it was because of them because it still was hot, crowded and expensive.

I really liked their wild mouse. 3 years ago when I rode it, Wildcat's main issue was washboarding at the bottom of the first couple of drops, exactly like SFA fixed on Roar. Of course Roar could now use a bit more attention, but that's wood coasters for you. Don't build 'em if you don't want to have to rebuild them. Initial cost cheap for a reason. I also think Wildcat has a better layout than Roar, despite coming first. Love both of them. Of course, to some it's not even about getting something better, they like to hate. Fortunately most parks ignore them out of necessity, but we've still lost some good rides to the complainers.

According to queue-times, Dorney is among the most crowded CF parks other than the Point. Seems I usually hear it's noncrowded. Which is it?