ZeroGravity55

That 1st drop should be the most intense first drop B&M has ever done. Now granted, you have RMC doing beyond vertical drops with a train that is the about same length and roughly a 95 foot shorter drop. So it probably won't be that intense, but I imagine the valley of this drop is going to pull some serious G's.

Yes and no. For me it's a yes. I had a trip planned for the 26th of October centered around getting night rides on The Voyage. Now I'm planning on going to Kings Island. The GP locals probably aren't that concerned about it. Having been to HW's Halloween event, it's really a glorified pumpkin patch to me. The GP eats that crap up. Last year, The Raven lot was full and half of The Legend lot was full. That corn maze and kids activity stuff they put together sucked the capacity right out of the rides. The longest wait was in the morning for Raven right at opening and that was 25 mins. Everything else was 10 or less. Since it was only families mostly, they all left before sundown and every coaster was a walk-on from 6-8 pm.

I don't know, I think Steel Vengeance is the most beautiful-looking coaster I've ever seen -- especially at night. I understand where you're coming from with the B&Ms looking good, though. I'm sure Orion will look great. I didn't ride Steel Vengeance opening year because of its one-train ops, and then it was removed from Fast Lane Plus for a time, and finally because the weather forecast was awful over three straight weekends near the end of the season and I ended up not going. Sometimes it's a lot of little things that aren't the fault of a ride's visual presentation. Oh I think Steel Vengeance is beautiful too, but I'm also a coaster enthusiast lol. I just think that there is a portion of the GP (like my friends GF) that walk up to that ride and take one look at it and say there is no way I'm ever riding it or they get talked into riding, ride it once, then come off saying they'll never ride it again. You're right though, last season was a downer for the whole industry it seems. So it probably isn't fair to judge SV's appeal factor when you factor that in. It'll be interesting to see the ridership numbers for it this year compared to last year (did CP ever release those?).

We all actually went to SDC in April and had a really good time. Time Traveler was actually the favorite of our group! It's funny now that I've gotten them on two more RMC's (Outlaw Run and and Storm Chaser), they refer to them as min-SV's lol. The older I get, the more I agree with you about having a few beers while at the park. While I love HW as it's been the park I've grew up with, we went to HW 4 weeks ago and KK 3 weeks ago and we had a much better time at KK. That was mostly because there was little to no wait for the rides, but also because we were drinking. Could have used a few at HW. When you work with the public and then go to a place on your vacation where there is a ton of people who are very similar to the people you deal with on a daily basis at work, you need something to take the edge off. B&M rides in general are more marketable just because as I've said before, they're so damn beautiful. RMC's are rough and rigid looking, but they also do stuff that looks damn near impossible. SV is very intimidating to look at. My friends GF didn't wanna ride it because of how "scary" looking it was. However, she didn't have a single problem riding Millie or Top Thrill Dragster before we got to SV. As I used to tell my cooks, appearance is everything. You could cook a steak that maybe the best tasting steak ever, but if the outside looks like sh**, nobody is going to eat it.

Steel Vengeance got me to go to Cedar Point last year. I used the fact that they have like 18 roller coasters to get my friends to go with me. Funny thing is, once I got them on Steel Vengeance, that's the reason they're making the trip again with me next year and spending more money in the process flying and staying at Breakers. They loved it that much. Now if a park has an RMC and I want them to go with me, I tell them it has a ride like SV and they're ready to go. That being said, we're also making the trip to Kings Island again next year for Orion.

The biggest complaint I always see with SV is people don't necessarily like the transitions when the track is re-align with the footers which always throws in some laterals. Personally those were some of my favorite parts. The little jolt into the MCBR and when you come out of the last barrel roll in and get thrown to the right with a quick jolt. To me, those aren't rough or out of place though. Honestly it feels like Alan Schilke did those on purpose to find a way to throw some laterals into the ride.

Planning on going to Kings Island on October 25th and getting fast lane plus. I'm assuming that the park will be bonkers busy. Should everything still be manageable with fast lane plus? Not really interested in the haunts. Looking to enjoy a fall day at the park along with a lot of night rides.

They'll never RMC it. Remember, the people who now own the park, their dad, Will Koch was a co-designer of that ride and they consider it to be his masterpiece. Lets give them a chance to continue to re-track the ride like they have been doing so over the past years, because what they've been doing has worked tremendously in my opinion. They've only re-tracked 1500 feet the 6,442 feet in the last two years, so they definitely have more to do. Oh and to RMC this ride, it would cost them upwards of 25 million or more to do it (when compared to SV price tag). It would have to be the biggest coaster RMC has ever created to this point. They would already have the worlds longest Hybrid coaster, but to even get the tallest and fastest from BG, they would have to add 53 feet to the lift (It would make the ride 223 feet tall with a 207 foot drop!) which is probably around what they'll need to just complete the layout. If you haven't noticed, they haven't spent more than 7 million in a year since Thundebird, so the chances of it happening are slim.

Return run was great in August with all the new wood and IPE wood as the top two layers. The spaghetti bowl turnaround was probably the worst part, but not nearly as bad as I've experienced in years past with others parts of the ride. I'll say they've done an outstanding job the last 2 years with the re-tracked sections. I really think their maintenance team has benefited from working with the GCI crew on Legend in 2016 in terms of how they build their track now.

Something happened on Saturday as The Voyage went down and never opened up again. The park said on Twitter that it was track maintenance that was scheduled for the end of the season, but had to be moved up.

^ For real. No one is gonna be able tell the difference between 300ft and 287ft just looking at it. The sheer size of this ride will be awe inspiring to look at in person. For example, Valravn is a smaller ride in terms of height, but I couldn't get over just how big and imposing that ride looked from the humongous track and steep lift. To me, that's one of the things B&M does best. They build the huge, beautiful imposing rides that you could sit and watch all day long.

Storm Chaser 9-1-19

Was there the Sunday before Labor Day and that food was outstanding (as was the beer). There's a bit of a wait for it if they get a lot of orders but well worth it!

That long Inclined brake-run is basically kinda like a second lift hill (aka one big block section) and it's easier and cheaper to move the train with gravity than drive tires. As why it's so tall, probably more or less B&M being using caution as they do with all their designs. While Intamin is comfortable coming in hot to a brake-run, B&M has their limitations on how far they're willing to push basically everything.

That stream was awful. Also really surprised they didn't have a press release sent out the minute the ride was announced or Videos already uploaded to their Youtube set to publish right after the announcement. Seems like this whole thing was just kinda threw together with no thought whatsoever.

^ What's left of Hyena Falls would actually fit in quite nicely in the plot of land that Monsoon Lagoon currently occupies. I really think they should move the slides and then turn that area that it currently occupies into a year around activity trail of some sort for kids similar to the one they do for Halloween in that area. That really goes over well with families at their Halloween event. At least do that until they can expand the dry park out into that area they don't waste the restroom and Pepsi Oasis that was built out there. I did a bit of research and the Proslide water boosters are supposed to be more efficient and use less power than the magnetic slides. According to this article from CNN, the top speed on the initial launch is 20 mph. To me the magnetic slides seem to more or less glide up the hills where this seems like it's going to actually give you a bit of a kick up the hills.

^ They only have 7 million tied up in this investment, so we very well could see another major attraction shortly.

I would think the capacity would be higher than Wildebeest. Shorter length and basically two slides instead of one. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk The rafts seat one less person than Wildebeest, however it gonna be loaded six at a time as there appears to be no separate lines for both sides. With that said, it could be more similar to Mammoth's capacity depending on how many rafts they're able to run at once. Getting on this thing next year is going to be horrible as Mammoth and Wildebeest both pulled at least 1 hour and 45 min waits during their opening seasons at the peak. The good news is that once the newness wears off, the lines for each water coaster should balance out quite nicely in a couple of years unless attendance skyrockets.

I love the interaction it has with the walkways and lazy river! This should help balance out the crowds as every one wont be hanging around the wave pool anymore.

^ It's still a triple down if you wondering if there as been any track changes? However some might argue that's it's more of a double down now that the MCBR acts as a trim and takes most of the airtime out of the first down No offense but going on the last weekend of daily operation wasn't your best choice. HW goes to weekend operation this week and reduced their hours last week, which tells me a lot of their seasonal staff is done for the year. HW also isn't gonna cap crowds when they have people driving 3+ hours to visit their park. I will say this. (and I'm not defending HW's wait times on food as that's something they still need to drastically improve, especially in the waterpark) having worked in food service for a lot of years, anytime there is a boil water order, it slows all food operations down. Anything that requires water has to be boiled before it can be used. There's no way to prepare for that nor could you staff enough people keep up when there is probably 20,000+ people in the park. Sounds like it was just an all around crapy day for guests and workers too.

They're making it pretty obvious now or it's the best troll job of all time. "Water Coaster Family Geteway" contest that ends 15 mins after the announcement. New teaser!

^ It's always the weekend after Memorial Day, so it would be the 29th and 30th of May next year.

I don't think you're giving B&M a fair shake on that. They really haven't been given the opportunity recently in the US to build a new flyer to take advantage of the potential that B&M has discovered in that style in the last 17 years. It's been 10 years since one was built in the US.

^ The working theory is that it's a launched water coaster that would be the fastest water coaster in the world. That would put the launch at over 63mph. It's appears to be an uphill launch that goes over pathways and the valley of the first drop on Voyage. There would only be one splash down, as they're going to re-use PP former area which had one splash down. Only part that's confusing to me is that the return hill definitely won't go over the Voyage as that's at Voyage's tallest point, so it's gonna have to go underneath. Now I'm sure they can create a new bridged section on Voyage to make it work and it would be a nice head chopper, I just don't understand why they would go through the trouble to do that. Nobody seems to be able to source where this leak came from. I have two working theories. Either it's fake, or HW leaked the layout themselves. HW just doesn't let this stuff slip like this by accident. This leaked layout has generated more talk than any of the teasers HW has officially put out combined. Leah Koch, who is one of the owners and now has Paula's job, would be privy to those layout blueprints and wouldn't surprise me one bit if that's where the leak came from if it's real.

So the park has been busy dropping a few more hints. The first being in this blog post. Spoiler Alert, this ride announcement isn't on the same level of Thunderbird. Then in this newsletter that was sent out yesterday: Notice how hot new food addition is Flamin' Hot CHEETOS lol Here's the video that was linked in the newsletter: [youtu_be] [/youtu_be] Looking at the video: One, there appears to be either Tigers or Cheetahs on the socks. Two, Obviously a water attraction since they used Safari Sam, however, socks seem to imply that your feet are going to get wet, so perhaps this ride will be accessible from both the dry and water park? As soon as I saw this, I immediately thought of this video TPR just put up: [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]