TBpony414

Chicken - wake the sleeping VIP dragon!! I mean it all in good fun (hopefully it comes across that way) and besides the VIP stuff I do genuinely enjoy DIFTF's posts. There are some great members here.

The only challenge that I know about was when they went to put in the tunnel underneath the new bridge entrance they hit water. Ended up costing $1mil to get the natural spring that they didn't know existed rerouted! Here is a great 45 min documentary on the building of Fury that aired a whopping 2 times on Travel Channel a couple years ago, never to be seen on tv since. https://vimeo.com/135352766

There was a guy last year that would bust a nut over the VIP tours in just about every other post. If you look back through the thread, there is a decent amount of info on them if you can get by his editorials... Ugh, bust a nut was right. That guy was a piece of work. The VIP tours do nothing different except there's an employee walking with you for half the day and they hold your stuff while you ride so you don't have to put it in a bin or hide it behind a tree at MF and TTD. That's IT! The cost is ridiculous. Get FL+ and you're golden.

Were they assigning seats? Filling the whole train or only half of it? Today it's up after opening late and waits are 100 minutes. I'm so freaking excited to get on it. LR, please, please, please, please, please still be working on Monday! I hope Mystery Mine is working too since I know a lot of people say it's great.

Most likely. Mystery Mine seems to have been TC all morning as well. Fingers crossed LR opens up... it's encouraging that Dollywoodlover20 saw some action over there yesterday. I'm really sweating my trip next week.

it smells. and the 3D effects are cheezy as hell. This, in spades! It's also hotter than you can possibly imagine. I personally felt like I was suffocating at one point inside when I went in the peak of summer. Floating at 0.0002mph thru fluorescent cardboard cutouts for 10 minutes was more than enough lol The VIP tour is actually skip the line passes. They don't have a tour guide take you around and hold your things at exit ramps or anything like that which is what it sounds like. There are two versions: Version 1: $25 gets you 1 ride on each of the 6 coasters. You have a wristband and they cross off each coaster as you go along. Version 1a: For $8, you can pay to add on one ride on Black Widow or Aero360. This is an especially good deal and I highly recommend Black Widow. It's the most intense and most fun frisbee I've been on by far. Version 2: $80 (or $85) gets you unlimited rides on each of the 6 coasters, plus one ride each on Black Widow, Aero360 and I think the extreme flyer thing. I personally think this is an absurd amount of money for little gain with zero other flat rides involved. Note: They do run out of these, especially the $25 one! Get there around or before noon and you should be good. I arrived at 1PM in June and there were only a handful of $25 bands still available. You are able to buy them online, however it must be done at least 48 hours in advance. The booth where you pick up the passes is straight ahead when you enter. Sky Rocket will be on your right but keep walking straight about 50 paces. It's an unassuming grey-ish thing that kind of looks like a pool snack bar or ride photo booth and you just walk right up.

I agree with alilstronger that BGW is possibly not the most memorable park if you're going mainly for thrills. It's a beautiful park, though. Griffon and Apollo's Chariot are my favorite coasters there and I personally find Verbolten a waste of time. Unpopular opinion on that last one but I stand by it. Chrischucktown - make sure to ride Curse of DarKastle! Even with half the effects not working it's still a blast. Can anyone confirm if they've gotten things running better since the last time I was there 2 years ago? They have a great log flume that spritzes you so make sure to ride that too. It sounds like you ought to do a single day KD, BGW, and WCU. Please report back on how your trip went!

Great info, thanks for sharing. Good call on Afterburn. I’d assumed it was just another batman-clone-style B&M inverter, but it sounds like I totally overlooked it. I’ll prioritize it. I agree about the flying coasters. I know my coaster preferences enough to know that I typically find them overrated. Would much rather spend my time on the ABSOLUTELY INSANE looking ride that is Fury! Hopefully all goes according to plan, and I’ll have a great mini trip report to share later tonight! A-hole reporting for duty! Their flyers are incredible - Kweiss, we are talking about the flying scooters in Snoopyville that you can snap basically without any knowledge of how to do it (and they encourage snapping!) Since you are on a time crunch though, absolutely skip them this visit. I would never, ever recommend doing their POS flying coaster Nighthawk unless you want to have a miserable rest of your life. Fury is #1, Afterburner #2 and Intimidator 232 is #3. We thought I-232 was best in the front row at night. If it comes down to skipping something though, definitely skip I-232! Make sure to report back

I think 2 days at KD is overkill, the park isn't all that big and if ride lines were to be long you could do Fast Lane. I doubt you'll need to do that though on the dates you'll be in the area. However, it depends how much time you want to spend in the waterpark. I'd skip it, personally because unfortunately it's located way in the back of the park where you pay for a bunny and change into swim stuff, then walk for 10 minutes down a path to the actual slides and wave pool. It's inconvenient. Busch Gardens is a totally different type of park with a lot more hills but there are significantly less rides. It's extremely pretty. I've never had a problem spending only a day there. It's been at least 10 years since I was at Water Country USA but I remember it being awesome... maybe someone who's been recently can chime in if it's still that way? With all that said, I'd personally spend 1 day at KD getting on whatever rides I wanted first, and then water park 2nd if you really want, then one day at BGW and one day at Water Country USA. Be sure to post about your trip when you're back!

First off, congratulations on your recent wedding! A honeymoon to Shanghai and Tokyo sounds incredible. I can't wait to read along and experience all the adventures from the big trip. Off to a great start!

Ok Seeker, how about this: I'll cross my fingers and do a Volcano launch dance for you if you do the same for me and Lightning Rod - where I'll be next weekend for the first time ever. Deal? Volcano is my favorite ride in the park and it was closed in June when I was at KD. I was so bummed. I live in the area and have ridden it probably in excess of 300 times over the years and I just love it because it's so rerideable. It's super smooth, the launch in the front row is amazing and overall a really unique coaster. Yes it's short and but so is Storm Runner at Hershey and that ride kicks all kinds of ass! I really hope you can get on it. V: The Blast Coaster > I-305 any day for me.

This is so depressing. Sorry bud. I'm trying to remain positive a la Boldikus but really am just bracing myself for the same experience (err, lack thereof) in 8 days. Are the ride wait times really this low? App is saying Blazing Fury 5 mins, Daredevil Falls 10, FCS 25, Mystery Mine 20, River Rampage 35, Tornado 15 and WE 5 mins. Seems like minimal times to me for it being a Saturday in the summer! Perhaps the heat is keeping the GP away or maybe they're all sardine canning it up in the shows?

Cool chart Canobie. Weather for my visit is currently predicted to be 88-89 degrees all 3 days as a high and mid 60s for the low. Is DW similar to CP in that they'll keep trying to get the rides open up until the last 30 minutes of park hours? Or if they haven't gotten something (mainly LR) running before, say, 6PM they'll just say screw it and change it from TC to CD?

^ The night picture of Joker with the storm clouds behind it is fantastic! Glad you got some rides in despite the crappy weather.

Hahaha!!! I don't think I'd be able to pull this kind of thing off with a straight face because I'd burst out laughing 2 sentences in. You deserve an award for spur of the moment creativity and acting, good sir! I rode in 1-3 by accident with my SO who isn't the biggest Magnum fan and he's probably never riding it again. I wasn't thinking about it being the ejector seat, it just happened to be the shortest line. I reminded him to do the seatbelt tighter than humanly possible and not slam his bar down but he pretty much did exactly the opposite. Oh well. I had a great ride, however! Have you ridden Black Widow at Kennywood? If so, how come you like MaXair better than Black Widow? I find MaXair (and especially Delirium at KD) to be a bit of a snooze fest compared to BW. They're still really fun rides though that we always take a spin on. Regarding Chet and Matt's - someone here told me about them a while back and I stopped there in June. The restaurant wasn't what I expected inside but was fine. They have sports jerseys all over the wall and sports playing on tvs, but it doesn't feel like Glory Days (if you have those up in NY) inside or anything. They have a large menu with all kinds of stuff on it for fairly cheap but the pizza IMO is where they really shine. I loved it so much that we ordered carry-out in July when I went back to CP and it turns out they have a drive-thru pizza pickup window. I shit you not! That alone is amazing. They cut the slices into long, thick, rectangle-like pieces which makes for easy eating. I'm curious about your reasoning, since we didn't have as much fun as we expected last time we went. I'm curious as well why both of you had less than stellar visits to CP. That stinks. Overly hyped? Sick of the rides? Too big of a park and overwhelming? Tired of the crowds? Other reasons?

TTD is smooth as butter, I'm telling you it's a totally different ride. I rarely ride Ka because even in the front I feel like I just got smacked on the back of the head with a frying pan. I don't know why it's so much worse than Dragster. Clearly SF doesn't care about maintenance as much as CP and maybe the heaviness of the OTSRs make it more difficult to launch, who knows. The good news is I have the opportunity to ride Dragster once a year. The bad news is, it's completely ruined Ka and made it almost unrideable by comparison! Either way, do yourself a favor and Get To The Point.

Amen! Fingers crossed it's open for you. I'm getting really nervous about my trip down there which is rapidly approaching. Prototype rides are great except when they don't run. It sucks to read so many people making the trek down there, some people even from across the pond, and not getting a ride on it. My long drive for my first time ever at DW seems like nothing compared to some travels from other people. For that reason alone I'm not necessarily in favor of way bigger/cooler/faster is better. Push the limits but do it smartly. With that being said, obviously nobody anticipated it'd have this many problems after being built. Is LR another ride like TTD where we'll be checking the app to see whether it's working or not for the rest of its life? Sure hope not.

Thanks Canobie!

What time do they put on the app whether it's closed for the day or not? I realize there may be no rhyme or reason but in general if they're not even trying to open it at all, would it be posted at or by 10AM when the park opens?

I'm curious to see what becomes of Maverick's normally long line with NMS debuting next year. It could go one of two ways: Mav will have no line because everyone is flocking over to NMS... or, NMS has such a long line that people don't want to wait and so they go to Maverick next door which means Mav's line won't really change. Either way, Millennium Force will continue to crank out trains of happy riders. We're getting a freaking kick ass RMC next to an amazing Blitz so it's all good!

Call the line cutters number. Have them ejected from the park. I have seen it done at other SF parks years ago. I'll have to look into that and do it next time. It'd be safer and much easier, maybe even take a picture of the offenders. The issue is if nobody is nearby to eject them, often the people cut way up and almost to the station so you only have a few minutes to act on it. Contrary to what other posters have written about the queues it isn't so much people jumping under the queue rails to cut, but instead walking through the line and pushing past other people. People who are so oblivious that they let huge groups of kids (and sometimes adults, but usually 10-20 yr olds) right past and then I look like a crazy person when I calmly but firmly tell them they aren't getting past me.

The only thing missing from your Knoebel's update was more pics of the food! I went there about 20 years ago and need to get back since clearly I've been spending too much time at major corporate parks. I remember spending my whole evening back then alternating between snatching brass circles on the carousel and flying on Phoenix. ETA I just saw you have a trip in 4 days for Lightning Rod. I sure hope it's working for you (and me in 13 days) so will be crossing my fingers that you get on it.

Derpologist - your drawing looks accurate to me with the angles we know exist from track work already in place. My Paint skills are embarrassing so I think you did a great job haha. Robb - these photos are incredible. I can't even believe this coaster exists outside of some insane NoLimits creation. Thank you for posting them for us to gawk over!

Me after seeing TPR's pics from the NMS hard hat tour

These teasers are weird but you guys crack me up!!