Condor

I don't know about you, but I'm sold. This looks like S&S's take on a Full Throttle -type ride without the midcourse launch, but a stronger initial launch. I wasn't thrilled with SFGAm's coaster collection this summer, but I think this will be a good one. Maybe best in the park.

This isn't the Mack/RMC looping hyper coaster of our dreams but I actually think it's the right coaster for SFMM right now. It fills the perfect niche in their lineup. Fixed!

I'm convinced Cedar Fair is just using names of Pacific Rim jaegers for their new coasters now. I actually happen to like this one though! And this layout is far and away more original and better than I think anyone expected. I don't care how mediocre I thought Valravn was, Striker Eureka----I mean Yukon Striker looks incredible.

Thanks! I'm just under 6'2" so I'll have to work on my slouch game.

Great photos Chuck! Apologies if this has been answered in other threads, but did Steel Dragon's max-height restriction prevent anyone from riding? As I understand it a 185cm limit (a hair under 6'1") came with the new trains. I'd like to know ahead of my trip next year.

Thanks! CCI made some great wooden coasters in their time, though just about all of them needed (or still need!) major rebuilds to remain viable. I want to add Rampage, Tonnerre de Zeus, Cornball Express, and Silver Comet to my list sooner or later.

Nice to see such a detailed look at "the other" Tokyo Disney park. People tend to focus on TDS for obvious reasons so I feel like we don't often see TDL explored as thoroughly.

That's awesome you liked Surf Coaster so much. I knew from POVs that it will be a must-ride when I go to Japan next year. It's encouraging to see such a glowing review of it.

Day 9 – Six Flags Great America SFGAm had the minor distinction of being the last of what I’ll call the truly “large” U.S. parks I had yet to visit. There are still plenty of small-to-medium sized parks (Lagoon, Valleyfair, etc.) I need to see, but this was the last of the big boys. I was born in downtown Chicago and I’ve been back to the city plenty of times during my years as an enthusiast, but I’ve never felt compelled to go here. So… why, right? Now here’s the point where I risk coming across like a provocateur. SFGAm didn’t (and at the time of this post still doesn’t) have a single coaster I honestly cared about riding. There was a point around 15+ years ago when I thought it actually looked like the best park in the chain. But as coasters like El Toro, Tatsu, and New Texas Giant went up at other Six Flags parks, in my opinion SFGAm seemed to fall behind. As someone who values things like narrative structure and pacing, even the addition of RMC’s Goliath didn’t interest me much. But I had one more day to fill after Michigan’s Adventure and with SFGAm and Indiana Beach as my nearest options, I finally bit the bullet and decided to have myself a Six Flags day. It turns out I thought the park was really nice. I remember reading some real horror stories about this place on here, but that wasn’t my experience at all. Appearance and upkeep place it in the upper tier of SF parks and operations and service seemed just fine for the most part. But those coasters… I’m sorry because I know this place has some devoted fans, but I have never felt so underwhelmed by a coaster collection at a park of this size. Every Six Flags I’ve been to has at least one coaster I’d be happy to marathon until closing after I’ve grabbed all the credits. I didn’t find a coaster like that here. I rode a few of them twice, and one of them three times, but that was enough. Even though my day was going well, by 7pm I had done everything I wanted to do and drove back to my hotel. I hope Six Flags bucks the trend and the 2019 addition is a game changer. Joker I don’t have a lot to say about these S&S free-spin models. I had two great rides on the one at SFFT, but my experiences on the others I’ve ridden since then have been mediocre. And as with my frustrations on spinning coasters, my inversion count on these things is almost always zero. 5/10 V2 I had completely forgotten to get my once-per-visit ride on Wicked Twister a few days before, so I was kind of looking forward to this. Impulse coasters are not my thing, but I still enjoy them as long as the wait isn’t more than a few cycles. The launch is still good and the front spike is fun if you’re seated far enough forward. 6/10 Goliath There just wasn’t a way this thing was going to impress me after experiencing Steel Vengeance and Twisted Timbers on the same trip, but it was still the presumptive top coaster in the park. At least that’s what I told myself. Unfortunately, Goliath wasn’t even that. Yes the airtime is solid. That’s all I can put in the plus column. I’ve never seen anyone else say this on here, but Goliath was rough. And I’m the kind of guy who has a high tolerance for roughness. I mean come on, Voyage is my favorite wooden coaster, so how bad could this RMC really be? Apparently rough enough to distract from the majority of the small handful of elements this coaster has. The pullouts from every element were jarring. That doesn’t mean painful, but at least on my two rides, Goliath didn’t offer enough for me to want to continue putting up with it. This can't be how this coaster usually runs. It didn't feel like an RMC at all. I know plenty of people make the short length a non-issue, but going back to my Raptor analysis, I argue it’s actually a big issue. It doesn’t matter that Goliath’s track length is a 100-300 hundred feet greater than Medusa Steel Coaster or Storm Chaser. This is a taller, faster coaster that packs in a smaller set of larger elements. It’s a less “dense” layout and that’s why it has no sense of narrative or pacing. And pacing doesn’t just mean “how quickly it traverses its elements.” I mean it the same way a movie has pacing, in other words the appropriate high and low points spread over a variety of scenes/elements to create compelling sequences. The less dense a layout is, the more difficult this becomes. I’m surprised to say it, but Goliath isn’t even a top 25 wooden coaster for me. Now that I’ve endlessly bashed it, I feel like I need to point out that I don’t think it’s a bad coaster. It’s still “good” just not “that good.” 7/10 Updated RMC rankings 1. Steel Vengeance 2. Medusa Steel Coaster 3. Wicked Cyclone 4. Outlaw Run 5. Twisted Timbers 6. Twisted Colossus 7. Iron Rattler 8. New Texas Giant 9. Joker 10. Goliath X-Flight My nominee for most annoying pre-recorded station spiel ever. That “Air Force colonel who’s also xtreeeeeeeeeme!” voice must drive the ride ops insane. The best thing I can say about X-Flight is that presentation of the ride makes it look awesome. I love how the midway and queue line make the whole layout so accessible. I’ve heard that this was a little on the rough side, but that wasn’t my experience. This wing coaster key-holes really well a couple of times and that’s about it. Nothing else about it does much for me. It’s a decent ride, but probably the weakest of the five wing coasters I’ve done. 6.5/10 Raging Mine Train This was the coaster I was looking forward to most. On paper Raging Bull might have the best hyper coaster layout B&M has done. I had heard all about “the trim brake…” (queue thunder and lightning here) for years, but I’m a big fan of Silver Star, which gets similarly criticized for trimming, and I remember Bill wrote a pretty positive review of the ride last year. So I was optimistic it would be a non-issue. Well I don’t know what trim-brake-ignoring super power he has, but I want it because as much as I hate to join the chorus, I think the trims absolutely ruin Raging Bull. The first drop is just as epic as you’ve heard, but after that it just goes too damn slow to be a thrilling coaster. You can see the glorious ejector incoming over that camelback and then… poof…… it's gone.The MCBR activating every single time doesn’t help matters either, but that’s on all B&M hypers. It’s sad because with this layout, Raging Bull is another coaster I could easily see as one of my favorites if they let it run unrestrained. 7/10 B&M hypers/gigas 1. Fury 325 2. Goliath (SFOG) 3. Nitro 4. Mako 5. Silver Star 6. Diamondback 7. Apollo’s Chariot 8. Raging Bull 9. Intimidator American Eagle I didn’t have a lot of hope for this one. I figured it would be much like SFMM’s old Colossus and that’s exactly what it is. It’s not painful, but it definitely isn’t smooth and doesn’t run nearly as well as Rebel Yell is this year. Bad tracking and the excessive trimming required to make it tolerable reduce this to a lackluster coaster that still has potential if properly refurbished. I do like how both sides are slightly different. 5/10 Superman: Ultimate Flight These things always manage to have the longest lines at their respective parks. It’s got to primarily be a throughput issue, but guests here genuinely seemed excited for it more so than other coasters and I get the appeal. I really like these S:UF clones even though they can’t compete with the bigger flyers. I think they're some of the most underrated coasters out there. They’re intense and unlike some, I happen to find the seats comfortable. 7.5/10 Batman: The Ride Probably my favorite Batman clone not by virtue of being the original, but due to the setting. The landscape has grown in nicely around this one in a way it has not on most others so the on-ride visuals are better. Still the same intense whirlwind as always. 7/10 So with all the obvious candidates out of the running, what was my favorite coaster at Six Flags Great America? Viper This guy! Viper was the biggest surprise of the trip because it’s one of those coasters you simply never hear a word about. It’s also the first Cyclone copy I’ve ridden that not only tracks well but has airtime! It has a lot of the same blend of laterals and airtime that I liked so much on Twister, though not as intense. It starts out okay, but really finds its rhythm in the second lap where you hit three solid airtime moments in a row buried in the wooden structure. This thing has got to be a capacity beast too. I was impressed how well it tracks considering that they run five, three-bench cars per train on it. Viper managed to be the top 25 wooden coaster for me that Goliath was not. 8/10 Demon I appreciated the nostalgic 1970s lighting and music the park has maintained (or brought back) on this coaster, as its twin out west doesn’t have it. Is it even possible to feel nostalgia for something you never actually experienced in the past? Probably not, but I have no idea. Unfortunately Demon is still kind of brutal when you ride the thing. As I said with Anaconda, there’s probably a way to brace yourself to get good rides on it, I just lack the experience with it to do so. 5/10 Whizzer My second favorite coaster in the park and just maybe the best family coaster ever designed. As always, you’ve got to hand it to Schwarzkopf. Whizzer’s super unique, has retro appeal, a fun layout, and a perfect setting in the trees. I don’t know why considering how popular it is, but Six Flags does not include this on the Flash Pass. That means full queues all day, the only thing preventing me from going back for re-rides. 7/10

Day 8 – Michigan’s Adventure From the top of the Cedar Fair food chain straight to the bottom! But you know what? I hardly cared because I was beyond excited to ride one of my bucket list coasters going back almost 20 years. Some of you might remember those Discovery Channel Thrills, Chills, & Spills shows from the early 2000s. That was the best roller coaster footage available before sites like TPR and others with YouTube channels supplied us with the kind of nearly unlimited content we take for granted today. I first learned about Shivering Timbers from this segment of Discovery’s Extreme Rides 2000. I had a bunch of VHS tapes that I recorded several years’ worth of Discovery theme park shows on and I’m pretty sure I wore all of them out from repeat viewings as a teenager. To this day I still remember some of them so well that I actually had this Paul Greenwald guy’s voice from the on-ride portion in my head while riding it. Skip to 15:11 for Shivering Timbers. THANK GOD they got rid of that trick-track, huh? That looked utterly terrifying. I didn’t realize they had reprofiled it, so I kept bracing for it on the return run the first time I rode, then when we entered the helix I thought, “Wait, what? Where was it?” Look, we all know that beyond Timbers, Michigan’s Adventure doesn’t have much. So I’m not going to write several paragraphs trying not to dump on the park while looking for ways to spin parts of it in a positive light. This isn’t a bad park, just a severely limited one. But I will call them out for one thing. The operations across the board and on Shivering Timbers in particular were downright abominable. The park was pretty dead, but you’d still expect at least a modicum of effort, right? I honestly think I timed one Timbers dispatch at the approximate length of the Triassic Period. They ran two trains on it, which was a good start, but they stacked them with one train spending a solid 2 minutes on the brake run every single time. With only 8-12 riders per train. On a 5,400 foot-long coaster. Good night.... Shivering Timbers Was it worth waiting two decades for? Yep! I loved it. It still hauls like a speeding freight train and never feels like it loses speed the whole way. There’s plenty of airtime, and while it’s not ejector air by today’s Intamin/RMC standards, it still delivers the force of approximately 1.45 Phoenix’s (Okay, I’ll stop. And look, it’s not that I don’t like Phoenix. It’s actually really good. Like seriously good. Like almost as good as the very best wooden coasters in the entire state of Pennsylvania!). Shivering Timbers is starting to get rough again, though. I’m not 100% certain, but I believe GCI retracked it in 2015 around the same time they did Ghostrider. The difference is that Ghostrider got Millennium Flyers and a couple layers of much denser ipe wood while Timbers didn’t. Three years later and Ghostrider still runs great, but Timbers now jackhammers in a few places. The ride is fine for now, but I’d be worried to come back and try it again in another year or two. Hopefully more track work is planned and maybe (yeah right…) a set of Millennium Flyers in the near future. Please? This would probably be a top 10 woodie for me if they did. 8.5/10 CCI wooden coaster rankings 1. Boulder Dash 2. Legend 3. Ghostrider 4. Timber Terror 5. Tremors 6. Shivering Timbers 7. Raven 8. Boss 9. Villain (R.I.P.) Wolverine Wildcat Talk about a perfect RMC candidate (again, yeah right…)! It’s both rougher than Shivering Timbers and has none of its redeeming qualities! I could see this being like CA Great America’s Grizzly if it got a little extra care – a deluxe family wooden coaster that isn’t too thrilling or intimidating, but I can’t imagine Cedar Fair wants to pay more than the minimum level of attention to it. One and done for the credit. 5/10 Zach’s Zoomer Now this kiddie woodie is more your typical example than Comet at Waldameer. It’s another one and done ride for enthusiasts, but a good start for young kids. 4/10 Thunderhawk I actually liked this SLC pretty well when I rode it 15 years ago at Geauga Lake, not that it left much of an impression. After riding it again in its new home, I’d put it somewhere in the middle of all the SLCs, neither as smooth as Limit or SFNE’s Mind Eraser, nor as rough as MP Express or Kong. 5/10 Corkscrew It’s a little rougher that the original model now at Silverwood and doesn’t have as much airtime down the first drop in the back car. Like all the coasters here except Shivering Timbers, it’s just another credit. 4/10 Mad Mouse Maybe I’m weird but I actually kind of like these Arrow mice even though the banked turns kind of defeat the purpose. Only the second one I’ve done besides the one at CGA. Upon checking RCDB, there are apparently only three of these still operating. Wow, I guess? 5/10

Glad to hear that Goldstriker is still running well. I've seen a few reports on here that it was beginning to get rough. Should have known better.

I like the description of Twisted Cyclone as the "Batman: TR" of RMCs. SFOG was my favorite Six Flags even with the old Georgia Cyclone, so I really need to get back there and ride the new version.

It was taken approaching the tyrannosaur paddock...

Days 6-7 – Cedar Point I went on a tour of Germany and the Netherlands last summer that included all of the major theme parks you’d expect. This was my first time visiting any parks outside North America and as tends to happen when you experience something from a new culture for the first time, the way you look at things you once thought you had a clear idea about can change. Cedar Point had been my favorite park for as long as I could remember, but some of these new parks had me questioning that. It was fascinating to see how a place like Europa Park manages to bundle a vast coaster lineup with detailed theming, great food and beverage offerings, resort hotels, numerous flat and dark rides, and operations so efficient the average SFMM ride op could probably yawn and miss an entire Wodan dispatch. Then a stop at Phantasialand took the blend of immersive world building and thrills to an even higher level and Efteling had its own approach too. Was Cedar Point still my favorite park? I still said yes if anyone asked, but privately, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Well I went back and guess what? It still is, dammit. As much as I loved those great German and Dutch parks, if I could only visit one park for the rest of my life, I would still choose The Point. I go once about every two or three years and while CP’s coaster collection still remains unequalled, over my last few visits the improvements to F&B, landscaping, and the overall presentation of the park (plus events like Brew and BBQ!) have left me feeling that the absence of a Euro-style theming/thrills blend doesn’t even matter. It turns out you don’t need elaborately constructed environments when you have a Great Friggin Lake all around, staff keeps pumping trains out of stations quickly, and you up your flower and shrubbery budget just a little where it really counts. Oh, and having 5 of my top 20 coasters all in one place will always be kind of cool too. So with all of that, and especially now with the king-kaiju itself, Steel Vengeance, lording over the coaster collection, my favorite parks are Cedar Point, Phantasialand, and Europa Park in that order. I stayed at Breakers on my last two visits, but decided on the Express Hotel this time given the cost of a longer road trip (I know, that's not very ostentatious of me. Sometimes I disappoint even myself). Seeing that I don’t go back to my hotel room during the day anyway, staying off the peninsula didn’t matter at all. This was also the nicest 48 hours of weather I’ve ever had at CP. I don’t think the temperature got above 72F the entire time and it didn’t rain a drop. On one hand, that’s exactly what you pray for when you go here, but on another more obsessive (perhaps even slightly masochistic?) level I kind of wish it had been about 15-20 degrees hotter. The coasters didn’t feel quite as intense in the mild weather as they usually do in summer. Maverick usually leaves me feeling wiped out in the best way possible after two consecutive rides, but I could marathon it no problem this time. Likewise I didn’t gray out in MF’s big overbank, nor did Raptor feel like it tugged quite as hard at my feet. Then when you consider that I was riding I305 and Twisted Timbers in 102-degree heat just a few days prior, you might understand why the more demented side of me was yearning for CP’s coasters to run just a tick faster. I took the boardwalk from the main lot up to the Magnum gate for early entry both days, but perhaps not surprisingly managed only a single ride on Steel Vengeance between the two. It was down until about 9:45am the first day and didn’t open until a few hours after that the second day. But it hardly mattered. With careful use of Fastlane Plus I managed twelve rides on it over my two days including four night rides. I’ll do a proper review below, but for now I’ll say that as hard as I tried to remain realistic, I came in with expectations higher than I’ve had going into any coaster before and somehow it actually managed to meet them. My 67 year old “mild enthusiast” father joined up with me for CP. His favorite coaster has been Millennium Force for the last seventeen years and nothing else has come close for him. Now he has a new favorite. Maverick Are there any two better coasters in closer proximity to each other than Maverick and Steel Vengeance? Unless Hersheypark goes full-Schilke one day and we get Skyrush literally on top of RMC Comet, I don’t think we’ll ever see CP’s new duo one-upped. Most people won’t consider Maverick Cedar Point’s headliner anymore, but it’s still a quality top 5 steel coaster in every way. It’s still the park’s most g-force positive coaster and the variety of things it does well is unmatched. The only thing I dislike about Maverick is how the trim brakes after the launch stifle any possibility of airtime on the hill that follows. The train obviously needs to slow down before entering the turns, but in an ideal world there would be some way to trim it over the water following the hill in question. It doesn’t matter much though. Maverick still beats 99.5% of all coasters out there. 9.5/10 Millennium Force No coaster adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts more than Millennium Force. My dad and I reminisced about our first rides on it in 2001, how it took me so long to build up courage to ride in the front, and how it took both of us even longer to finally put our hands up on the first drop. The intimidation factor is long gone now almost two decades later, but this will always be our “father-son bonding coaster” and we still have just as much fun riding it as we always have. Random observation – does anyone else miss those metal “Intamin giga-roller coaster” plaques that used to adorn the sides of the trains before they switched to fiberglass bodies several years ago? 9/10 Top Thrill Dragster Fastlane works much better on this now that it takes you right up to the station. TTD was also oddly reliable during my visit. I rode this four times over two days and not once was it already down when I showed up, nor did it break down while we were in line. Weird. I actually remember looking down at Steel Vengeance from the tophat and having the clarity of mind to observe a train and think, “oh, good, SV is running again, we should go there next,” before dropping down the other side. I’m such a purist for pacing, length, and well-rounded layouts that I had honestly forgotten how much I liked this coaster. 8/10 “Big” Intamin rankings (i.e. no impulses, old bobsleds, etc.) 1. Skyrush 2. Expedition GeForce 3. Maverick 4. El Toro 5. Superman the Ride 6. Intimidator 305 7. Millennium Force 8. Taron 9. Cheetah Hunt 10. Fahrenheit 11. Storm Runner 12. Top Thrill Dragster 13. Xcelerator 14. Kingda Ka 15. California Screamin’ 16. Volcano 17. Superman: Escape From Krypton Steel Vengeance Where do I even begin? It lives up to the hype in every way. The airtime over that first curving camelback is a sensation unlike anything I have ever felt. At first it’s a similar feeling to what you get on the big ejector camelbacks on El Toro, then at some point your enthusiast mind tells you it’s time for your body to come back down into its seat, but SV just keeps pulling you up into that lapbar for longer and longer. I couldn’t stop laughing the first few times I rode it because of how truly alien the sheer duration of airtime on this one element was. Then you feel it all over again on the outward-banked camelback. Those two hills plus the first inversion provide the longest, sustained negative-g experiences I’ve ever felt. Even after 12 rides on this thing I still wasn’t used to it. A word about the MCBR. I had two rides where it didn’t grab at all, one ride where it bit hard, and the rest had only mild trimming. The two untrimmed rides made the second half simply astonishing. But the difference between the heavily-trimmed train and the more “typical” experience was noticeable only on the drop off the MCBR itself. After that they felt exactly the same. Yeah, I wish it was a pure block section and nothing more, but overall I don’t think it’s a big deal. If I have one “gripe” about Steel Vengeance, it’s the ending. It suffers from a bit of Voyage syndrome where the last stretch of track (on Voyage it’s the final tunnel and last set of turns) feels a little repetitive and redundant. There’s just so much airtime on this thing that the final set of bunny hops isn’t the kind of satisfying finale it might be on another coaster. Ending with an elongated, Medusa Steel Coaster-style heartline roll past the queue line or a set of sharp s-curves might have been more interesting and given you a moment to celebrate and reflect before hitting the brakes. I want to put this into perspective. When your only critique is that the designer should have replaced one kind of awesome with a different kind of awesome just for the sake of variety and “narrative” then you know that designer has made a masterpiece. Is Steel Vengeance my #1 now? At least for now I’ll say not quite. It doesn’t have the borderline violent intensity that puts Skyrush on another level for me. Even Twisted Timbers had a pair of holy sh*t violent moments that Steel Vengeance didn’t even though SV still beats TT overall. But then again, I rode TT when it was a full 30 degrees hotter, so who knows how SV might feel on a day like that. And as for Skyrush, riding it 23 times with no wait is the kind of experience that will simply never be possible on SV and it really cemented Skyrush for me. So SV is a close #2, but I could see that changing one day. 10/10 Updated RMC rankings 1. Steel Vengeance 2. Medusa Steel Coaster 3. Wicked Cyclone 4. Outlaw Run 5. Twisted Timbers 6. Twisted Colossus 7. Iron Rattler 8. New Texas Giant 9. Joker Valravn Man I’m glad I skipped coming back for Valravn the last two years and waited for Steel Vengeance. I didn’t like this ride at all. I don’t like the new B&M vests and they hamper the ride experience on dive coasters in a way they just don’t on inverts or wing coasters. If your chest and shoulder dimensions are even a little larger than average, there’s simply no way to get any airtime at all on this thing. It’s got a great layout and offers epic panoramic views, but I wasn’t able to fully enjoy it. And it was nothing painful, but I thought Valravn tracked somewhat rougher than other dive coasters too. Give me Sheikra, Baron 1898, or Krake any day. 6/10 Gatekeeper My second favorite Cedar Point B&M and second favorite wing coaster. If I’ve been away from it for a couple of years, I seem to talk myself into believing it’s a lesser coaster than it actually is. Gatekeeper is far from the forceless lawn ornament some would have you believe. The first set of elements all the way through the keyhole section are all very good and the whole thing is about as much pure fun as you’ll have on anything else at this park. Too bad B&M clearly made no effort to end it on a high-note (read the next review for why this matters so much). 8/10 Raptor My favorite CP B&M and unless Katun or Nemesis finds a way to really knock my socks off one day, Raptor will always be my favorite inverted coaster too. I’m a screenwriter (nothing produced yet, so don’t ask) and I naturally look for the kinds of narrative patterns seen in film in other things as well. Coasters are a perfect example and Raptor has one of the best linear plot structures I’ve ever seen. Now no coaster follows a 3-act structure perfectly (except Kennywood’s Thunderbolt – now that coaster follows it perfectly), but I’ll make an attempt with Raptor. You have an inciting incident to kick off Act 1 (quick little dip out of the station) followed by a steady build delivering the exposition you’ll need to appreciate what follows (the lift hill with views of the lake, Gatekeeper, and the midway), followed by Plot Point 1 where we, the riders/protagonists are forced into a dramatic new direction (the first drop with a kick out above the midway). Act 2 contains the bulk of the character conflict (the inversions) and is interrupted at the Midpoint with a false sense of security (MCBR) bookended by a rising and falling action mirroring what started the conflict (the counter-clockwise spiral up, and clockwise spiral down mirroring the loop). Then comes a new type of rising and falling action (two corkscrews on either end of a brief straightaway) followed by the Act 3 climax that takes what we have learned to now overcome the old conflict in a new way (the helix – it’s a loop turned on its side!) before a return to the status-quo in the station. A lot of older B&Ms do this narrative thing well. But none of them have the kind of nuanced symmetry and compelling Act 3 climax that Raptor has. For a lot of people, this might mean absolutely nothing, but to me, it means everything and marks the difference between a good invert and the best invert. 9/10 Rougarou It’s not hard to see why it gets overlooked at this park, but I think Rougarou is CP’s underrated gem. B&M used to create some very nice, dynamic layouts that were less inversion-obsessed back in the day and this is one of them. My favorite part is the quick left-right slalom after the inclined loop. It really tries to throw you out of the train there. This has also become quite the intense little experience once the floorless trains allowed them to deactivate the trim on the first drop. 8/10 Magnum XL-200 If I loved Skyrush, you just had to know I’d be a Magnum die-hard too right? “Ol’ Iron Thighs” they used to call me. Okay fine, maybe nobody ever said that, but I do wish more enthusiasts could appreciate this coaster. I’ll say it again – ride in the middle row of any car and it won’t be rough – you will not get hurt. If the airtime and lapbars are still painful for you, then I don’t know what to say anymore. What did you expect? The Phoenix or something? (I couldn’t help myself…) 9/10 Gemini I remember marathoning this coaster for an hour straight with little-to-no wait back in the years when you could always count on MF’s line to be 2 hours and Raptor and Mantis were consistently 90 minutes. Crowds are so much more spread out now that setting up camp at Gemini is no longer the draw it once was, but it’s still one of the most fun, most re-ridable coasters out there. Over time it’s become the perfect super-size family coaster than so many parks lack. 7/10 Blue Streak I really wish I got to ride this in its original incarnation with buzz bars and no head rests. I have a feeling those who did might be romanticizing the experience a little, but what do I know? Today’s Blue Streak is the only Blue Streak I’ve ever ridden. Maybe the airtime was actually pretty good? You can see the potential all over this thing, but alas, it now fills pretty much the same niche Gemini does. Always worth a ride. 6/10

I'd say much of the same about another underrated wooden coaster... Viper at Six Flags Great America! Big fan of that ride after my first time at the park. It was actually my favorite coaster there by a wide margin.

Day 5 – Waldameer Park The 4-hour drive from Danville to Erie had me racing against the clock to beat an incoming storm. So I did just what you’d expect a California driver to do around all the Pennsylvania slow pokes and matched the speed of traffic while getting lost in my thoughts listening to the Joe Rogan Experience. This meant I walked through the entrance at Waldameer at the exact time the rain started POURING. But this time I was prepared with a waterproof jacket and my feet were already taped up and practically mummified in gauze, so I avoided a repeat of my Kings Dominion experience. That “Good Eating Outside Theme Parks” thread actually came in handy big time as I simply got back in the car and made the drive down the hill under Ravine Flyer to Sarah’s where I dined on chili dogs and chicken strips surrounded by about three or four kids’ soccer teams. And the food was great! I figured I’d probably be there for a while, but almost as soon as I had eaten, the sky opened back up and I saw a train soar over RFII’s bridge, so back I went. I also went across the street to Shickalay’s for some IPAs later on. I think Philrad or somebody mentioned that one. Good advice! It doesn't look like it from these pics, but we had major rain here early in the day. Waldameer is like a smaller Knoebels in some ways. Similar in scope and as far away from “corporate” as you can get, but it lacks the remoteness, ambience, good food, and quantity of attractions. You know, that’s really not a flattering description at all and it sells the park short. I had a great time when I went last in 2014 and made Ravine Flyer my 199th coaster, and I did again this year just the same. There's a few worthwhile non-coaster attractions like the ARM-Larson drop tower, a Music Express, and the skyride, plus a few others I didn't do this time. It’s still no Knoebels, but what they do have is an incredible Gravity Group that was easily the best wooden coaster on the trip (I had to get in just one more jab at Phoenix )! Ravine Flyer II If this woodie were anywhere else, there’s a pretty good chance it would run like crap. This layout asks those clunky PTC trains to do things they just shouldn’t be able to. It’s much like Voyage in this regard, only half as long. The park apparently still takes great care of it because it runs like a dream. You start out with one of the all-time great lifthill views and from there on its either long, sustained airtime moments or sudden directional changes all the way. One of my favorite parts actually comes right after the first camelback in the form of a sharp left-right transition that pretends its airtime. You get another great lake view on the crest of the far turnaround, then three more hills with strong floater air before climbing back up out of the ravine. It’s here where I find my biggest criticism. RFII is a very front-loaded coaster. The first half is as good as you’ll find on anything, but the second half ranges from “still pretty good” in the front car to almost kind of “ho-hum” in the back. It spends much of the second half making banked turns over flat land on the main park level, and only dives into the ravine once more, but without any airtime. Instead, you plunge down after a 90-degree banked turn. I see why this element seemed very cool when it was built in 2008. Wooden coasters in general just weren’t doing all the crazy banking stuff yet. But now it’s just kind of there. Others may disagree, but if Waldameer ever decides to reprofile any parts of this, that turn is what I’d zero-in on. Tweak it to rise up a little higher and bank it slightly less with a sharp pull-over to give one more pop of air on the way down before the ride ends. Or we could just forget all that because Ravine Flyer II is still a top 5 U.S. wooden coaster. 9/10 Steel Dragon I don’t know what it is about these Maurer spinners people like, because every time I ride one, I don’t spin a lick. I totally forgot to write about Laff Trakk at Hersheypark and it was the same story there. And on Undertow at SCBB. Be it by myself or in a full, evenly balanced car, I might as well be on a wild mouse given the type of ride experience I always get. And I find this true for all Maurer spinners, not just these SC2000 clones. It took me 3 or 4 rides just to get friggin’ Winjas to spin better than an empty playground carousel in a light breeze. Whatever, I already had the credit so one lap just to remind myself was enough. 4/10 Comet Don’t let the seemingly paltry rating dissuade you, this right here is the king, the granddaddy, the apex predator of kiddie wooden coasters. I don’t know if it’s the “biggest” one at all, I just know that it has these weird, fun little airtime pops with buzz bars and it all takes place under a nice canopy of trees. It’s actually a lot of fun and worth re-riding to try out different seats. This isn’t your average Woodstock Express. 5.5/10

That's the true magic seat. In the back, but not over the wheels. I talk about this whenever Magnum comes up, but many people don't seem to pick up on it.

RMC Phantom's Revenge, keeping only the station, lift, and trim brakes. The Log Jammer site is a giant ruse.

I think Ghostrider ought to be just fine for a while. It's running a lot smoother than Shivering Timbers did last month. I believe GCI retracked both around the same time but Ghostrider got Millennium Flyers and a top layer of denser ipe wood that Timbers didn't. It seems to have made a difference.

Maybe my experience was an anomaly. That or I'll have to just gladly accept being "wrong"on this one.

It actually took me 9 days, though I could have done it in 7 if I had only done one day each at Hershey and Cedar Point. I'm with you on carrying as little as possible with me at parks. I usually limit it to whatever can fit in a pair of zipper cargo pockets.

Thanks! Hope you get back more quickly than I did! They're easily two of my favorite parks.

Day 4 – Knoebels A theme I keep returning to in this TR is comparing how particular coasters rode in 2018 to previous visits, and how many of them seemed substantially different from my memories of them. Other than Cedar Point, the repeat parks I hit on this trip are all ones I haven’t been to in 5-6 years. When you’ve ridden close to 200 more coasters and nearly doubled your total count in that time, it only makes sense that your standards and preferences will shift a bit. That shift can be an awesome thing when a coaster like Fahrenheit catapults 30-40 places up in your rankings, but it can also kind of suck when one that you thought was untouchable suddenly drops. That happened to me with one of the all-time sacred cows of the enthusiast community, Knoebels’ Phoenix… But I think I’ll leave that thread hanging for a moment while I talk about a bunch of other stuff that people will probably skip right over, like the International food court. You know a park has done something right with their F&B offerings when you stop thinking about rides altogether to instead ponder how to budget your time and money between various counter-service outlets that all serve like five different things you just have to try. “Yes, I think I’ll sit down and eat my San Francisco turkey melt from one station, then I’ll stand in line at another station and eat my burrito from a third station while I wait for that second station to finish frying my alligator nuggets… OMG I forgot about the pizza! Oh, right, it’s only 11:30 in the morning, I still have time to digest all this first, then go to Cesari’s later around 3:00, then maybe once more around 7… no, make that 6 so I’ll still have room for ice cream or a funnel cake at 8… Yeah, that’s doable.” And I’m rarely ever the kind to just pig-out at theme parks (unless it’s Epcot), but at Knoebels I can’t help myself. My first Knoebels trip was the second half of day on which I also visited Dorney Park. I was so wrapped up in Phoenix and Twister that I didn’t spend as much time as I should have riding all their other great attractions. I think the only non-coasters I rode back then were the Flyers and Black Diamond. This time I hit those two as well as Paratrooper, StratosFear, Haunted Mansion, Power Surge, and the chair lift. And they were all great. Flyers are still my favorite and I couldn’t believe how crazy the program they run on Paratrooper is! Never seen one run quite like this. Phoenix I was all about that Phoenix kool-aid in 2012. I vividly remember airtime on every hill after the first drop, the smell of the tunnel, my eyes watering during night rides, and strong laterals on the flat turns that took me by surprise. But this year it just wasn’t the same. So what happened? I don’t really know. Is Phoenix overhyped? Nah, too many respectable posters on here who visit way more often than I do still swear by it. Maybe it’s I who has changed and only the Skyrush's of the world can truly wow me. God I hope not. Or maybe I just happened to catch Phoenix on a less than optimal day. Even the best wooden coasters are still temperamental. Now I didn’t dislike it or anything, but the airtime felt muted and even at night on a slick track after some rain, the corners of my eyes stayed dry and I didn’t feel any real air until the “airtime buffet” return run. Phoenix is still a borderline top ten woodie based on this visit, but it definitely dropped a bit since I previously had it at #3. Hoping for a return to form next time! 8.5/10 Twister You might think a mildly disappointing experience (only by its lofty standards) on Phoenix would hang like cloud over my day at Knoebels. Maybe it would have… if I didn’t have the time of my life riding Twister! Now this is the kind of wild, intense wooden coaster experience I’m looking for! Legend at Holiday World is one of my favorite woodies for the way the lateral g’s it pulls threaten to shear your train clean off the rails and Twister is right up there with it. The park has clearly put a lot of effort into maintaining and improving this coaster. There’s a new steel support tower propping up the highest turn plus lots of bright new wood spliced in all over the track and now it runs like a dream (or as close to a dream as a turn-focused ride running heavy PTC trains can be). The track makes what almost feels like a flat s-curve at the bottom of the first drop and I swear that somehow it’s the smoothest part of the ride. There are a couple of jolts elsewhere in the layout but they’re all during a quick transition or moment of airtime. And speaking of airtime, the big second drop gave stronger air than I got at any point on Phoenix. As for the laterals, the trademark helix isn’t even the strongest element on the ride. After the helix winds around to the left, there’s a sudden directional change and a crushing uber-lateral right turn. Straight track with surprising burst of air follows, and then you dive to the right once more through a concrete tunnel that absolutely howls during night rides and is packed with even harder lats. Depending on the seat, you might even get one more good pop of air before hitting the brakes. By the end of the day I had ridden Phoenix 8 times and Twister 13. It also vaulted into my top ten woodies. 9/10 That bleached blond with dark roots look is so 2015 Ghostrider.... Flying Turns This thing was fully built, but not operating back in 2012. That was during a stretch of several years when Flying Turns had the distinction of being perhaps the greatest new-build SBNO coaster in the entire world! No need to rehash Knoebels’ efforts to finally get the ride open here, I’m just glad I finally got to ride it. It’s obviously meant to be a high-end family coaster and is far smaller than the outwardly similar, yet very different Intamin or Mack bobsled coasters. Since its capacity is so low, it had by far the longest line in the park and I only rode it once, but it’s really fun. I wish it was a tad longer, but I suppose even operating a ride like this at all in this day is a triumph. 6/10 Impulse I don’t know what the popular consensus on this coaster is, but I didn’t like it. It doesn’t track very well and in general feels like a poor man’s Eurofighter. I guess it accomplishes what Knoebels needed it to do by having inversions and looking impressive in the front of the park, but it will never be something for enthusiasts to get excited about. It fills a niche and little else. 5/10

Look at the rider in the back-right seat. It shows just how open and exposed you are on Skyrush, just one of its many outstanding qualities. Days 2-3 – Hersheypark In Part 1 I said that I thought Kings Dominion had a top 5 U.S. coaster collection. I don’t know exactly where I’d place KD's, but I can confidently say that I think Hersheypark has the second best lineup with Cedar Point’s still at #1. They have three elite Intamins, an underrated and intense B&M, two well cared for classics in SooperDooperLooper and Comet, and a pair of GCIs (fine, three), at least one of which is still pretty good. I had been here once before during Skyrush’s opening season in 2012 when it instantly became my favorite coaster, but that day got cut short by an evening storm. Unwilling to risk that again and knowing how re-ridable the coasters here are, I decided on two full days, something that in the past I’ve only done at CP. The rain followed me up from KD the day before, so this proved a wise decision. On day 1 I rode everything except Laff Trakk, Wild Mouse, Trailblazer, and Sidewinder with no waits longer than 15 minutes, including an immensely satisfying 10 consecutive rides on Skyrush, all by 5pm before the rain hit. With another full day ahead, I took that as my cue to head to my hotel and then Uber over to Troegs, one of the best craft breweries I’ve ever been to and one that just happens to be minutes away from Hersheypark. I had heard about this place from other TRs, but I wasn’t prepared for how awesome it actually is. I enjoyed four of their beers and gladly would have closed the place down if I was willing to go back to the park hungover the next day like I once did at SFDK, but that wasn’t an experience worth repeating. Beer, food, atmosphere, and service at Troegs are first rate. I can’t recommend it enough. Here was my drink tally for the evening: Dreamweaver Wheat, Cultivator Helles Bock (my favorite), La Grave Golden Ale, and Crimson Pistil IPA. Not a below average beer in the lot. Now at Hersheypark, the service and operations were adequate. Not industry leading or anything, but comparable in most ways to a typical Cedar Fair park and a cut above the usual Six Flags. Their in-house food offerings aren’t great, but they have so many third party vendors in the park it doesn’t matter. Just stick to Chick-Fil-A, Moe’s, Nathan’s, or Chickie’s & Pete’s and you’re set. Fahrenheit I was a little underwhelmed by this in 2012. Sure it was fun and has a great layout, but I remember thinking it rode more like a tame B&M than an Intamin. Not the case in 2018! Sure it’s no Maverick, but this coaster pulls some solid g’s throughout and has serious airtime on the drop, exiting the Norwegian Loop, and on the bunny hop. I loved Fahrenheit this time and rode it more than all but Skyrush. I’m still surprised we haven’t seen more Intamins in the mold of this one. 9/10 Skyrush Still solidly my #1 coaster. I like them as overpowering as possible and I still haven’t found one that eclipses Skyrush in this regard. Plenty of people are turned off by the sheer violence of the airtime and transitions, but that’s what I love about it. It had been so long since I last rode it that the extra “airtime pump” halfway down the first drop alarmed me in a way I haven’t been in years. And if you can manage to keep the lapbar up just a little, there’s no greater coaster ecstasy than soaring over that first ejector camelback. Now I’ve heard all the complaints and they aren’t unwarranted. As another poster stated, enjoying Skyrush takes active participation. You cannot just sit back and enjoy the thing like Millennium Force or Expedition GeForce. You have to ride with a strategy, and boy do I have one for you! In the same vain as the “Mean Streak trick,” or the “Magnum trick,” I present to you the “Skyrush trick…” Now this trick is designed to help your thighs cope with the awkward lapbars and crushing airtime and it’s a little different from other tricks because it begins one year from the date you plan to visit. Here’s how it works: With your gym membership handy, start a 2x weekly routine of the following: (1) Incline leg press - 4 sets of 10 reps starting at 180lbs, but preferably as high as 360lbs by year’s end. (2) Leg extensions (this will really help your quads, but also jack up your knees if you aren’t careful) – 4 sets de-escalating from 20 reps, to 18, 15, and 12 reps of at least 60lbs, but preferably as high as 110 lbs by year’s end. (3) Step-ups - 3 sets per leg of 10 reps, holding a pair of 20-35lb dumbbells on a surface at least 24 inches high. (4) Leg curls – 4 sets of 10 reps starting at 70lbs, but preferably as high as 140lbs (this one won’t actually help you with Skyrush, but you don’t want your legs to look disproportionate). That’s all there is to it! You have now Skyrush-proofed your thighs! Okay, so that’s asking kind of a lot and maybe you don’t have the time. I get it. So here’s what you do instead: After the ride op checks your restraint and you’re headed up the lift hill, scoot forward about 2-3 inches in your seat so the lapbar comes down on your upper thighs instead of mid-thigh, then sit up straight just a little off the seatback and brace your hands on your knees in the turns (this will mitigate the vibration). Some of you might be thinking that doesn’t sound appealing either. I get that too. But as stated, getting the most out of Skyrush requires active participation. It’s like a game for me. I even took it one step further. I’d ride on the wing seats and then plant my inside foot on the floor beneath the middle seats on all of the pullouts to stop the lapbar from coming down further. Yep, that’s my Skyrush. 10/10 Storm Runner Even with minimal waits, they ran two trains using both sides of the dual loading station. So far so good, but the park also had this infuriating policy of chaining off the back car of both trains. This was allegedly to keep them open for “guests with disabilities” according to a ride op. I understand trying to accommodate people, but then why was this only done on Storm Runner? And why on both sides of the station? I asked the ride op why they don’t reserve the middle car instead, and while she nicely offered to open the back seat for me (I politely declined, not wanting to disrupt operations for special treatment), she acted as if this thought had never occurred. Now Storm Runner is still a great coaster, but for a back seat purist like me, I didn’t feel like I was getting the ride at its best. I previously had it as a top 25 steel coaster, but it wasn’t quite the same this time. Maybe the back car makes that much difference, or maybe not and my experience was being colored by my frustration over the apparent ADA policy. Is this typical on Storm Runner? Good ride, but unlike my last visit, this time I preferred Fahrenheit. 8/10 Great Bear This is the possibly most unique invert of them all and definitely the most underrated. The big problem is that it starts strong, but finishes weak. Contrast that with inverts like Raptor or Montu with big finales and you can see why Great Bear suffers in comparison. One more helix before the brakes, mirroring the first, and the layout would feel complete, but we’re left with a drawn-out s-curve back to the station. Before that though, Great Bear is excellent. It’s not the most intense invert, but it’s one of them and with the unique layout and spectacular visuals, it’s an experience all its own. 8/10 B&M inverted rankings 1. Raptor 2. Afterburn 3. Black Mamba 4. Alpengeist 5. Montu 6. Flight Deck 7. Great Bear 8. Banshee 9. Talon 10. Silver Bullet 11. Batman: The Ride 12. Patriot SooperDooperLooper It’ll always be a smooth mine train with a loop, but it’s fun and interacts well with the neighboring rides. Like many Schwarzkopfs it also functions as an ideal stepping stone from the family rides up to the major coasters. Now if we could combine the excellent Gerstlauer trains on this with the layout of New Revolution we’d have a real winner. 6.5/10 Wildcat I had always thought of this the way most of us do. It has its moments but is too rough and feels slow paced compared to the more recent GCIs. My first ride on it had me questioning all that. It felt no rougher than the average wooden coaster and was more aggressive and thrilling than Lightning Racer. I almost really liked it for a moment there. But it seemed to get rougher each of the next two times I rode it. After the third I was back to square one with Wildcat. Bring on that big white RMC crane! 4/10 Lightning Racer My biggest takeaway is that it’s kind of tame, but I think that’s what Hershey and GCI were going for. It’s the ideal thrill coaster that isn’t too intense and is fun for everyone. The racing is a nice feature, but it never does a whole lot for me and I’ll still take the meaner GCIs like Thunderhead or Goldstriker. It also feels like it’s beginning to get a little rough. Nothing bad as I have a pretty high tolerance for that, but hopefully some retracking is planned within the next year. 7/10 GCI rankings 1. American Thunder 2. Joris en de Draak 3. Thunderhead 4. Goldstriker 5. Troy 6. Wodan 7. White Lightning 8. Kentucky Rumbler 9. Lightning Racer 10. Prowler 11. Wildcat Comet I was blown away by how well they’ve got this thing running now. Six years ago it was a nice coaster with a great setting that was a little slow and any potential airtime was hampered by trim brakes. Now though, it plows along at a decent clip and does its best to imitate its more famous younger brother Phoenix at times. A set of skid brakes trim you a little on the second turnaround, but it’s free to do its thing after that. Comet is also running smoother than Lightning Racer this year, and I’d say it’s now Hersheypark’s best wooden coaster! I really enjoyed it and rode it a bunch. 7/10

The setting evokes a mini-Parrot Coaster to me a little bit. Probably even more so once the landscaping and foliage grows in. I'm not a big wing coaster fan outside of Thunderbird and Gatekeeper but this one looks just right for Toverland.