smallpox

sure, i'm having a blast! oh wait you were talking about the uh..

my first Arrow coaster was Steel Phantom at Kennywood, the first week it was open. i LOVED the thing. it blew me away. in hindsight, yeah, it was rough, but i didn't know any better. (B&M hadn't built Batman: The Ride yet!) i still have a Steel Phantom t-shirt and my daughter wears it as her nightshirt! my second arrow coaster was Drachen Fire (R.I.P.). i loved this one as well, though not as much as Steel Phantom. my third arrow was Anaconda.

I LOVE this.

the singing mushrooms are back!

yeah uhhhhh

the "long meandering queue" is the old "long meandering exit", so yeah it was at the same time. i'm guessing it might have been moved as part of the renovations to build either the water park or Wayne's World. i'm sure someone here knows for sure.

neat! that scene is pretty cool. it's several minutes of Rebel Yell POV.

it's weird that people can't be bothered to read the last page worth of posts before asking a question.

it didn't. it's just listed that way on rcdb I think because the admins there were fed up with altering the field. for a while there was an asterisk on there with a snippy message. i'm sure it is still topping out at the same speed it was on opening day 2010 (which at the time was supposedly 94 mph, although I've always wondered how accurate those estimates are .... someone needs to sneak in a radar gun to some amusement parks! ).

probably not the most optimistic reports I've heard are labor day weekend. but that's just rumors anyway, so take it for what it's worth.

if you are going on a week day, there's probably no need for fast lane in my opinion. Friday, Saturday, or Sunday during the summer? expect very long lines.

Hypersonic XLC had a considerably more forceful launch than kingda ka or ttd. those intamins feel like you are in the seat of a drag racer, but Hypersonic's launch felt like you were being rear-ended by one at full speed!

you have my condolences. although i never got to ride Kick Boodie, it looks like a truly amazing and unique ride that brought joy and fun to countless lives. he made the world a more interesting place!

hmm, let's see. it was 1986, and Shockwave was the brand new thing at Kings Dominion! my brother and i bought white painters caps emblazoned with the teal and yellow shockwave logo. the caps had those awesome 80s flaps that went down the back, almost like the hat itself had a mullet. the whole concept of riding a roller coaster WHILE STANDING UP was just completely mind blowing. kaboom. then, a year or two later, construction began on a monstrous structure built literally ON TOP OF lake charles. a giant steel contraption that looked to dwarf even the Grizzly, the tallest coaster in the park. it wouldn't open until the following year, but my brother and i went to the park as often as we could to check on its progress. one day, while riding Rebel Yell just to get a better look at it, my brother exclaimed, "oh my gosh, look .... it goes UNDER the lake!" i couldn't believe it, but he was right. at the bottom of the first drop, there was a cement tunnel. mind blown again. kaboom! ah, youth.

i was on Intimidator305 in the rain just a couple weeks ago. front row. it was a very light drizzle, but every tiny drop was like a staple gun to the face. i caught one droplet straight in the eyeball and it was NOT pleasant!

man, i haven't been to Kennywood since Steel Phantom's opening year (still have the t-shirt!). what a wonderful park.

this would be really cool and i'd buy it! i'm 35, so all the ancient KD history like the singing mushrooms, yogi's cave, the apple turnover and king kobra are indelible elements of my childhood. one thing you might try is searching your DVR for upcoming airings of "Rollercoaster", a movie from 1977 that occasionally gets aired (it was on a few months ago, i think on WGN). it's a B-movie about a mad bomber blowing up roller coasters, but it has some awesome footage of what the park looked like in '77. There's several minutes of on-ride footage of Rebel Yell when it was brand new. Lake Charles is beautiful with an enormous fountain where Anaconda currently sits, and of course took up the entire area where the water park is now. you get decent glimpses of the aforementioned mushrooms, the skyride, and many other attractions as well. (even in some scenes that are supposedly taking place at other parks, you can tell they filmed it at KD)

oh also i suppose i should mention that Windseeker was up and running.

i think it goes without saying that the phrase "greatest ride on the planet, bar none" is a subjective opinion to the point that prefacing it with the qualifier "in my opinion" would be redundant. but since you asked about the appeal, i'll go into a little more detail on why i love it more than any other coaster. note that the following sentences are merely my opinion : Intimidator 305 delivers a level of pure intensity that is unmatched by any other coaster. i love the insane speed, and the out of control feeling throughout the course -- the high speed turns low to the ground, quick changes of direction, the insane air time on the first two drops, and the quick airtime pops on the laster descents. all of this is achieved at the upper limit of positive Gs, yet without roughness or headbanging. it feels intense in an intentional and well-engineered way (as opposed to say a Vekoma SLC which is rough and painful through poor design). furthermore, and again this is subjective, but greying out just doesn't bother me at all. i get the same effect when i stand up too fast sometimes. really no big deal to me, and actually i think it's kind of cool that a coaster can be so aggressive without being rough. it gives me appreciation for how much Intamin is pushing the outer boundries of human tolerance of positive Gs with this ride. coaster preferences (smoothness, fast, fun) are of course subjective. but the bolded part i do have a bit of a problem with -- a grey out is not and cannot cause a "brain hemorrage". in fact it's the opposite -- a hemorrage is burst blood vessels in the brain, caused by too much pressure, and is very bad, obviously. a grey out is caused by reduced blood pressure in the brain, and is medically harmless (unless you're like ... in the process of operating an aircraft at the time of the grey out ). (of course, if you simply find grey outs unpleasant, that's your prerogative)

i went to the park yesterday and it was fantastic. despite the light crowd, all rides were open and i didn't see any problems. the weather was overcast but not rainy. cool but not chilly until the evening. perfect. the longest line of the day was Volcano at 22 minutes. most rides were near-walk-on. the new Border Cafe was excellent. love being able to specify exactly what ingredients go into my burrito. i picked the "spicy" (corn) salsa, but i think i'll try something else next time. it wasn't spicy at all. like ... about as spicy as Chipotle's "mild". it was weird. but at least there was hot sauce on the table i could use to augment, and the burrito certainly tasted delicious! i was also pleased to discover that Outer Hanks has a microbrew on tap - Main Street Virginia Ale by Center of the Universe Brewing Company. it's a malty and tasty ale, but a bit slight. i'm not complaining -- it was refreshing, but i would absolutely love to see a higher gravity IPA or (imperial) stout offered. but hey, i'll take what i can get, and kudos for stocking something other than the standard macro brew triad of miller lite, yuengling (made from rice and corn), and blue moon (a fake microbrew produced by coors). i305 was running phenomenally as usual. greatest ride on the planet, bar none. front seat and back seat are both great in their own ways. can't figure out which i prefer. Dominator was MUCH smoother than the last time i rode it (two years ago). it was rattling quite badly then, but yesterday on 3 laps in 3 different seats, that soft B&M glide was in full effect. Rebel Yell was running significantly better than i remember. it looked like it had received some rehab recently, and whatever they did certainly worked. Grizzly was an enigma. it's normally my favorite woodie at KD. i rode it twice, both in the same seat (near the rear). one ride was awesome, and the other was an unpleasant rattly mess. the only thing i can figure was that maybe the train was full for one ride and empty for the other. honestly i can't remember which was which, though. oh well. Volcano, Flight of Fear, and Ricochet, were all much as i remember them -- that is, extremely enjoyable! Anaconda and Hurler were much as i remember them as well .... *awkward silence* the ride ops on all rides were enthusiastic, fast and efficient. Shockwave's line was slow, but i mean what can they do. those restraints suck. not their fault. i was especially impressed with the folks operating Backlot Stunt Coaster -- that thing seemed like it was dispatching every 30 seconds. good work. the new Planet Snoopy area looks great. can't wait to take my kids, they're gonna have a blast!

floater please. getting my knees slammed into the restraints does nothing for me (looking at you, magnum xl200)

that design has a major flaw, which is the main problem with large ferris wheels: it takes so long to load one full load of passengers, that the actual in-motion part of the ride is very short. with so many more seats than even a large ferris wheel, loading / unloading would be near-constant, and none of the seats would ever be in continuous motion. the solution would be a slightly more complicated design. give it loading stations similar to the old skyrides: the cable is always in motion, it never stops, but when a gondola comes into the station, it disconnects from the cable and joins a backlog of waiting gondolas, where passengers disembark and load, and then are pushed our of the station back onto the cable. additionally, build it so that at the end of a loop, a single car can either head into the station for loading/unloading or bypass the station, remain on the cable, and keep going around. that part could be set up either as a pre-programed number of loops, or maybe even have it controlled by the passengers, depending on capacity needs.

i'm surprised people aren't making a bigger deal out of the revelation that KD is apparently running Anaconda's trains on i305 this season!

- if you drop a penny off the eiffel tower, it will accelerate to lethal velocity by the time it hits the ground (brought to you by people who paid attention during the lesson on gravity but fell asleep for the unit on wind resistance and aerodynamics)

wtf