neil009

I'm only saying this because no one else will, keep your expectations realistic. Knoebels is as amazing as everyone says, but it reveals itself slowly, even over multiple visits. When you first arrive, you may be very underwhelmed, just because of the overall "small carnival in the middle of nowhere" atmosphere, which is very different from any corporate park. Some people never get past this and walk away disappointed especially if they're traveling any distance for it. Everything that's great about Knoebels is in the details. Relax, enjoy the scenery, get lots of rides on the Phoenix, and it's totally worth it. Just give yourself time to warm up to it. Luckily, Phoenix is the one ride that can not be spoiled for you, no matter how many times you hear about how great it is. It will STILL catch you by surprise.

^The key word would be "separately". They're attached to the restraint, so it's all checked at the same time. Splitting hairs, I admit. For the record, the ops at Hershey aren't always bad. At worst, they're inconsistent. On most days Skyrush's trains are flying out at a pretty good clip. Although Great Bear seems to always be some level of awful lately, for some reason.

This park is peeling the band-aid off really, really, really slowly.

While it never goes that fast, the speed actually depends a LOT on the weight of your car. The ride can range from "blah" to surprisingly crazy and out-of-control feeling, depending on if you've got some fatties sitting up front. Get your fat friends to ride with you.

Yeah that's an example of a system having to be ridiculously overbuilt to comply with our hyper-safety (read: litigation) conscious society. I'm surprised they were able to keep the cars as light as they needed to be with those massive wheel assemblies.

That's good to hear, because that was really my biggest complaint about what was otherwise, a pretty awesome coaster! Not much has changed since the first season sadly. The material on the surface of the restraints is softer, so it doesn't dig into your thighs quite as sharply as it did when it first opened, which, I might add, was insanely painful. The bigger difference for me though was when they started releasing the restraints on the break run rather than waiting till you get back to the station, so you're not sitting there in agony the entire time while the crew finishes loading the next train. This happens *most* of the time. However, the main problem with the restraints, which is that they hold you too far down on your leg, has not changed. This contributes to the "thrown forward" sensation over the airtime hills, rather than being lifted straight upwards like on El Toro. To me the difference between these two restraint systems is pretty stark; on El Toro I feel the airtime as pressure in my face, which is where it should be felt as the blood rushes to your head as if you're being held upside down (not sure if people who aren't super skinny with slightly below-average blood pressure feel this same sensation), but on Skyrush it's felt as pressure on my thighs which act almost like the fulcrum on a lever, throwing my entire torso forward. Both are technically "airtime" and yet both feel completely different. TL;DR I completely agree with this guy: It's like the difference between being constantly aware of the restraints on Skyrush, versus not even thinking about the restraints on El Toro at all until they're raised and I look at the wrinkled, flattened mess my pants have become and reflect on the fact that they were really, really tight. Skyrush is still a painful experience, and if you've ridden El Toro you know it doesn't have to be that way. I'm still waiting for Hershey to get Intamin to come in and actually fix the problem. Given the restraint changes on Maverick and other rides, I still have hope this will happen. (*NOT* OTSR, just a lap bar that sits higher on your lap.)

It starts around 1:13 for anyone who has trouble hearing it. Sound libraries offer stock choral singing so you can add in big choral sounds to your blockbuster movie score on the cheap. Naturally this singing has no real words to it, it's just random syllables - "Oh, bo, da-doo" etc, it's supposed to sound vaguely like Latin or something. For there to be a hidden message involved HW would have had to dish out the money to hire a real chorus, at least three or four singers, to record it, which seems unlikely.

This actually sounds like a nearly perfect description of the entire country.

How does this clear up the myth? It all depends on the size/design of the make-over and the size/design of the new coaster. Assume for a moment that we're comparing apples and apples. KK wants an RMC that's this long, with this many elements. They have the option of remaking TT, or starting from scratch. They decided to remake TT. That would strongly imply it was the cheaper of the two options.

Trust me, you're not the first to say. And what you're reacting to is the way the layout was designed, which is different from what most enthusiasts mean by "rough". Rough generally means shaking, shuffling, jackhammering, potholes, things that indicate a lack of train or track maintenance.

Hey here's another myth this new ride should hopefully clear up. Awhile back in the CP thread it was stated that one of the Cedar Fair higher-ups said that CF crunched the numbers and found that an RMC make-over doesn't actually cost less than building a new coaster from scratch. I always thought this sounded dubious, but I'd say now it's even more suspect. You can't say the only reason to do the make-over is for marketing, profiting off of a ride that already has some level of notoriety, because KK isn't marketing this as the return of Twisted Twins. They're marketing it as a completely new, unrelated ride. So if it really was cheaper to bulldoze TT and start fresh, I'm pretty sure that's what they would have done.

Trust me, I would love to be wrong on this. And I'm sure many will tell me I am. You're just hearing one man's opinion. Holiday World is very clearly on an upwards trajectory, into the big leagues of parks, and at that level, decisions to keep rides "uncomfortable" (with things like extreme laterals) for the sake of purity or originality or whatever you want to call it are very rarely made. I'm talking from the perspective of a hard-core woody fan, lots of visitors would love to see a more comfortable Legend or a slower, tamer Voyage. I see it as only a matter of time before those demands are given into. Exhibit A: This year, after nine years of operation, the Voyage has been slowed down, seemingly for good. Again, most people may like the change, or don't see it as a big deal. For me and others I spoke to at HWN, it's really a loss, and a sign of things to come. This isn't doom and gloom exactly, it's just acknowledging things are changing, and the park is changing. I know I'm probably going to catch some heat for this post but that doesn't bother me. People don't like seeing what they perceive as negativity regarding something they love.

I don't think I've seen anyone mention the best news of all. We will never ever again have to hear anyone say, "Doesn't Six Flags have exclusive rights to the iron horse technology?"

I think we should be clear on one thing. They COULD keep them as is forever. It's not like the ride hits a certain age and suddenly the track becomes impossible to maintain. When they do finally decide to change the banking on the Legend, or put more trims on the Voyage, or whatever other unfortunate change is on the horizon, it will be a monetary decision, and it won't be because keeping the rides the way they are would make them go broke. It will be because they're a business in capitalist America interested in one thing: maximizing profits. Unfortunately, not every park can be Knoebels.

I totally get your point, but this isn't what I'm saying at all. If you ride it this Sunday and say to yourself, "that was too rough", then I don't know what to tell you, because it's seriously not that rough at all. I doubt it's changed that much in two months. Having said that, almost every wooden coaster that exists is at least slightly smoother in either a non-wheel seat or in the front of the two rows in each car. This is not unique to the Voyage. Also, lots of intense rides are more comfortable when you ride it a certain way, even modern ones like Skyrush (gotta lean into those curves). Also not unique to the Voyage. I've never heard anyone else talking about the ride like it's on this linear progression you're describing from smooth to rough, I've always heard it goes through good periods and bad depending on how recently parts have been retracked, but regardless, whatever has been done to it this year, it's apparently on the upswing. In full disclosure, I rode it maybe 12 times over the course of the weekend and in all of that I got 1 bad ride. Somewhere towards the middle of the train, it jack hammered through the entire ride like it was running on square wheels, it was bizarre. But that's a maintenance problem with the train, not with the track. If you're in any car other than that one, it's easily the smoothest of the three woodies. But the back half is also by all accounts slower and less intense than in previous years. So you'll have to see what you think.

Seriously, have you ridden it since they started using the MCBR? It's currently the smoothest and most re-rideable of the three, no question about it. And this is from someone who went for the first time this year, never having ridden any of them previously. I rode in the back, front, middle, all over. As much as I feel like this is almost inevitable with the way Holiday World is going, this would be a real tragedy. Laterals are what set the Legend apart. Take that away and it would just be a standard, typical woody with weird inconsistent pacing.

This looks like possibly my favorite RMC layout to date (not having ridden any of them), mainly because this is the first time we get a decent-sized non-wonky camel back hill to start the ride, El Toro-style. This is EXACTLY what I've been waiting to see from RMC, because they're so well known for the airtime on their rides, and there is no more perfected form of airtime than a steep tall camel back that rips you out of your seat all the way down. Kentucky Kingdom is looking to have a VERY solid lineup, I can't wait to watch them continue to grow. Question though. Even if they didn't have the money to RMC both sides, couldn't they have retracked the other side and kept it as-is? This would add another coaster to their count and we wouldn't be mourning the loss of an old-school rough-and-tumble CCI. The only problems are they wouldn't really have dueled (not that this seems to bother the vast majority of parks that currently own dueling coasters), and they probably wouldn't have been able to reopen both sides in the same year due to budget reasons. So for a year or two Storm Chaser would be running beside a derelict coaster, but it would give it more fly-bys and head-choppers to add to the excitement, and then when they were both running the old-versus-new dynamic would be really unique and cool. Oh well, if only they'd put me in charge of the world...

^I agree 100%. The area around Gatekeeper offers views of the lake, but it's also flat and empty and boring.

Cannibal is still the greatest name for any coaster ever.

I would only add that KK is the only park I've ever been to where certain employees were upbeat and enthusiastic, but STILL moved achingly slow. We talked about this before, but it appeared that everyone at KK has been told to be careful and take their time, and what they need is a top-down change in overall employee atmosphere where more attention is given to throughput. Hopefully, if they go a couple more years without decapitating anyone's feet or whatever, that can happen.

This. I bet they utilize some of side 2 but not all. We have yet to see anything that points to a launch, but they couldn't utilize all of both sides with only one lift.

That's funny. I don't know why I think of SFGAdv as having more coasters. I guess in my head I think of it as the smaller of the two (which it is, as far as acreage), and I don't really count the mouse, the boomerang, the kiddie coaster, or Trailblazer.

Gee, suddenly a dive coaster doesn't sound so bad.

Anybody who would put SFGAdv over Hershey is either brain dead or 16. In my humble opinion. I mean yes, SFGAdv has more and longer coasters, but other than El Toro Hershey is better in literally every respect. I would take one ride on Fahrenheit over one ride on Bizarro, Green Lantern, AND Superman.