neil009

I'd like your take on this since it was a fresh experience for you. The helix had some hella intense laterals, right? How did the final three turns feel compared to that? Would you call them regular GCI-style "hardly there" laterals or did they actually have any kind of punch?

Ditto. This is not great news to me. The way the crowd on this forums reacts to various news never ceases to fascinate me. Thunderhawk at Dorney, a ride with meh airtime on the best of days, goes from buzz bars to standard PTC restraints (which still allow a decent amount of wiggle room, at least for me) and everybody flips a shit. Now these two rides, both with fantastic airtime, go from the old OTSR which again at least for me allow for about a finger's width of legitimate "my butt can actually almost leave the seat" space, to these "I WILL CRUSH YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE" backpack straps and everybody starts praising Jebus. I do not understand.

Did the Legend open last weekend? Did anybody ride it? Or is this going to be the first weekend?

* While a little shimmy here and there doesn't bother me too much, I am glad that the old notion of "enduring" a coaster is going out the window. Intensity can be done well (SkyRush, Toro), but too often it's cited in an attempt to camouflage a simply inexcusable coaster. Around 2000, I can't tell you how often Six Flags framed its crappier rides as challenges, trials, and dares that riders would have to overcome. "This Boomerang is awful, so try to survive! Will you dare!? Also, Corn Nutz." I'm glad we're seeing RMC, GCI rehabs, and lots of different train modifications to revitalize ride experiences. Enduring pain = not fun! * Some people like to grow an ego within hobby communities -- this should be news to no one. Surely our opinions vary, but we've all seen those people who play characters: I've met the "everything is flawed!" scrutinizer, the "you just don't know how to ride" defender, and the "universally-praised coasters are for babies" tough guy at different events over the years. Establishing a rogue identity by way of constant complaining about good rides or false praise for bad rides are two ways it's done. Hopefully, we can see that egoism for what it is, and not take it as a truthful appraisal of a coaster. * From first-hand experience, I've ridden Magnum and thought that it was truly the best coaster at Cedar Point during some trips, and at other times it's aggressively unpleasant and in the "once was enough" category. So right there I have two real, yet conflicting experiences on it. It's been the same story for me with GG woodies -- top-ten rides or brace yourself. * We also have a community tendency to magnify the nuances between coasters, and also the nuances of a given ride in a particular seat, before/after rehab work, during a certain time of the day, etc. It can and often does get into nitpicking, but it's not unusual for people steeped in a hobby to develop - and debate - their refined palettes. So long as it's civil, I do enjoy "talking coasters." * People vary by size and ride preference! Like the old RCT ratings, we have the full gamete of intensity and nausea preferences, plus so many different body types and sizes. Just my knees smacking around the inside of an old Arrow mine train car is enough to taint the experience for me, but others might feel that they are smooth and have aged gracefully. In short, it's complicated! This is a really good post, I pretty much agree with all of this. I remember all of my rides last year at HWN on the Voyage were as smooth as it gets, EXCEPT for a single ride towards the middle of the train that felt like we were riding on a broken axle. Constant jack-hammering through the whole course, it was awful. So it really comes down to three things I think: The same ride giving inconsistent experiences depending on conditions, different people having different tolerance level for roughness same as nausea, intensity and anything else, and seasoned riders exaggerating differences between rides due to refined palettes. That about sums it up. That said, I think it's always worth pointing out that "roughness" has many different meanings. Some people call any coasters with strong laterals "rough", regardless of how smooth and well maintained the track itself is.

I love Twister to death but it is squarely a classic woodie (recreation). All they need is a Gravity Group terrain woodie with a couple 90 degree banks and maybe a barrel roll, THEN they'll be perfect!

Campfires seems the most likely option (the campground is extremely close and spans almost the entire length of the park), but I wouldn't be surprised if it's some kind of local industry smell. Doesn't Knoebels also own a lumber mill that's right next door? Maybe there's some burning involved in that? I had much better luck with Impulse and my poor, poor pelvic bone this year. I tried the trick of scooching down in the seat when they check the lap bars so I had a good amount of room at the start of the ride. I got some pleasant airtime over the first drop this way, and it didn't get nearly as tight by the end. I hope this works every time, it really was extremely painful last year. Twister is back to running as well as it ran two years ago. Last year wasn't *quite* as good, but now it's back at the top of its game. It's really amazing how much it's improved since like six or seven years ago, when it would come to a crawl at the top of the helix. Now it flies through the whole thing and it truly is an intense world-class ride, right up there in my eyes with the Holiday World woodies.

Maybe a new launched RMC. That would distinguish it pretty well from Lightning Run and Storm Chaser.

No need to dismiss the genuinely felt emotional reactions of others just because they care strongly about something you don't care about at all. I love carousel organs, I grew up at the park, and I have memories associated with that carousel. Its loss means something to me. The carousel itself may not have been that special but carousel organs are an important part of the industry's heritage. Here's what what the Chance wurlitzer used to sound like, for those who don't remember: Here's what it sounded like in 2015: This is like giving a coaster a full repainting and rehab the year before they tear it down. Here's hoping it went to a good home.

Did they decide to stay open an extra hour due to the crowds? It's 6:45, I'm nearly on Impulse, and the park hasn't cleared out at all. All the rides are still running with people on them. EDIT: They stayed open longer, I just snagged two more rides on Twister (which is back to its ordinary walk-on self). The park is still going strong as of 7:20 but my brother is cold and hungry so we're leaving. I hope none of the peeps here ducked out at 6.

At least as of about an hour ago, Phoenix was only running one train. It's nuts but this is what I was expecting with the Buy one get one deal on handstamps. Basically as many rides as you want for $17 (not that anyone is breaking even with these lines).

And the winner is: the skull room! It now has upsidedown skeletons playing chess on the ceiling, and the giant skull is now a new jump scare (lights up with noise). The new stuff looks FANTASTIC. The music in the room is now this weird scary atmospheric noise, no more corny 80s horror movie music. That's not all that's new either, some other changes I noticed: -The organ player now has a head that moves. -New paint along the warped perspective "laser section" -Tunnel we were talking about is now another moment of COMPLETE darkness, which are arguably the scariest parts of the ride -All stunts are working beautifully, including the hands in the dungeon I cannot express how happy I am with all the changes. My Knoebels Haunted Mansion standards are pretty high and today was possibly the best ride I've ever had on it.

I find it positively bizarre that RMC would have a problem with paint slowing their trains down when all steel coaster track is painted and I've never heard of other rides having this problem.

This makes me so freakin mad. At some point in the past couple years, can't exactly remember when, they put work, and I mean REAL work, into getting the Chance carousel organ from sounding like a sad warbly out-of-tune mess to a completely refurbished beautiful-sounding organ, just so they could then get ride of it? WTF! I seriously hope that organ went to an appreciative new home.

I'm pretty sure Black Diamond has the vortex tunnel. Maybe I'm not schooled in the technical terminology here, but Haunted Mansion also has a tunnel with flashing lights... which I believe is supposed to rotate but hasn't in many years (or possibly never did??). So me and coasterbill are saying they could potentially replace it with something else. Black Diamond has a tunnel which actually rotates, so it should stay. We all on the same page now?

Iron Rattler perhaps, but I really thought NTAG and Wicked Cyclone were awesome up until the brake run! I read a lot of comments throughout opening season about Wicked Cyclone being very temperamental, and on some rides it can crawl through the end. NTAG some have said can vary depending on time of day. I've been following the coverage of all the conversions pretty closely and inconsistent ride experience seems to be a theme among all except possibly Medusa and Twisted Colossus (just guessing but I'd say that's probably because there's been a lot less commentary among enthusiasts about Medusa overall, and Twisted Colossus ends both halves with so much speed no petering out is possible). Can't wait until I get the chance to try all of them for myself. My main point is just that I don't think anyone should cast final judgement on this ride until it's broken in more, they've ridden it under a variety of circumstances, and both trains are running in top form.

It seems to me that most of the conversions follow a basic pattern. Inconsistent ride, with some balls-out crazy till the end, others petering out through the final elements, whether due to trains or time of day etc. Anyone who's read the reviews of NTG, Iron Rattler, and Wicked Cyclone shouldn't be surprised by any of this.

The jungle room, I hope that is what has completely changed That was honestly my first pick but then I decided it was probably too "iconic" (if silly) to change. It's one of the things people remember the best because it's right at the end. Coasterbill that's a fantastic idea, I hope you're right. Is the tunnel supposed to rotate? Because as long as I've been riding it it's pretty much just a strobe and the weird "laser" noise, and also that red laser light effect before it that half the time doesn't seem to be working quite right. Definitely a dead spot, although it does set up some anticipation for the electric chair scare immediately after. I hope the laser noise doesn't go away though, I love that noise.

I will most likely be there tomorrow as well! Any speculation on what room of the mansion changed? There are a couple stunts that have been broken for a long time I'm hoping they fixed, like the monster hands/door gag in the dungeon scene, but I can't think of any rooms that needed to be replaced altogether. If that's what happened then my vote would probably go to something in that initial hallway with the pipe organ, a lot of those gags are pretty lame, or the graveyard scene. I always thought the skull room was a little pointless but everyone I take on the ride reacts really positively to it so what do I know?

^The question is how could that turn not produce neck-snapping laterals now that it's completely flat? Is it higher than the old turn used to be?

The last turn is more banked now, not less, like all three of the finale turns. EDIT No wait I guess I'm wrong. Ok, if they put a brake run before the last turn, in essence eliminating an entire element from the ride, I'm going to be SERIOUSLY disappointed. Like, "what the hell"-level disappointed. Here's hoping that's somehow not the case.

One nice thing about the delay is now all the POVs will be surrounded by beautiful lush green trees. I really dislike all the earliest POVs of Outlaw Run where all the trees are sad and barren.

Vagina vagina vagina! tee-hee

That's all you, man.

That is so awesome.

Ride the coaster and that will seriously influence your opinion of the coaster. The footprint of The Joker is much smaller than a 3,000+ foot coaster. Many times parts of a large coaster can not been seen from the rest of the park clearly. For example a sign on at the highest point of KingdaKa or Nitro would have to be immense to be seen. 50 years ago, many coasters had their names prominently displayed on the ride itself, but you won't see anyone claiming that The Joker is a vintage/retro coaster. Yeah that was a knee-jerk reaction on my part, the placement is actually growing on me. Also I remembered the Coney Island Cyclone.