VegasBaby

I would be surprised if they just scrapped it when you have parks like MiA or VF that could benefit from a relocated coaster. Also, I hope they don't go with Gerstlauer as their coasters are typically not high capacity. Maybe something like Gold Rush could work if they had a Mr. Freeze-like dual loading platform, but the park already has 3 short launched coasters. They really need another high capacity ride and something unique to the region like a B&M dive or hyper coaster would fit that need perfectly.

That is correct, it's currently running a short program where the main arm only spins in one direction and the individual seating arms don't flip very much.

I'm all for Knott's getting the first RMC Raptor coaster, however the trains would have to be a lot different than the concept video. The video shows 4-car trains with each car containing 2 people in single file seating, for a total capacity of 8 people per train. At a minimum, the trains would have to be 5-car trains with 2 rows of 2 across seating, for a total capacity of 20 people per train (similar to Lightning Run). My preference would be 6-car trains with a capacity of 24 people per train (the typical RMC train setup). The last thing Knott's needs is another low capacity coaster, so that would be my major concern with the Raptor concept.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the new coaster wrap around the Sky Cabin and extend all the way down to the new Calico stage, which would give them a pretty big area to work with. Knott's has proven with GhostRider and SB that they can get creative with ride placement.

I felt the same way when I visited the park two weeks ago. I've ridden TC a ton since it opened and it does seem faster now to me as well. It just flies through the course and the airtime is even more amazing than when it opened. I don't know if it's a matter of the ride being fully broken in now or what, but it definitely seemed to be running faster to me.

I really hope this is the case because we rode it on Friday and came away a little disappointed. The Top Scan at Lagoon in Utah runs a longer program (main arm spins both clockwise and counter clockwise) and the seating arms flip a lot more. It would be a shame to put in such a great and unique flat ride only to have it run a terrible program.

I was at the park today to finally sample all of the Boysenberry Festival goodness and I saw Sol Spin with people on it, so my son and I jumped in line. It's a really fun flat and a great addition to the park, although I don't think the arms spin as much as the Samurai at Lagoon. Here's a quick video I shot of it in action: trim.400EDC23-511C-4FE2-9DD7-11BCF6537026.MOV

I never thought that Knott's Boomerang was overly rough as far as Boomerang coasters go. That said, I'm excited for it to go and see what Knott's has up their sleeves for its replacement.

I would agree with you that it's not a new credit since nothing really changed. And yes, I count floorless conversions as new credits too.

Great news on Xcelerator, I am headed to the park on Friday and was starting to get worried. As for the Boysenberry Festival food stands, my experience has been that they were open when the park opened at 10am.

I believe most of the spring breaks are over by now. I know that LAUSD and Clark County (Vegas) were both last week. There might be some districts out this week, but I don't think the park will be too busy on Friday.

Wow, that's a bummer, the Claw was one of our favorite flats at Hershey. I wonder what's going on with it?

According to Is It Packed, it looks like the 23rd will be less busy than the 22nd, so I would go on the 23rd. In my experience, I have also found Sundays to be less busy than Saturdays and Sunday mornings can be pretty dead.

Hope your day at Knott's goes as well as your day at SFMM yesterday. You should go straight to GhostRider at opening and then head to the back corner of the park for Xcelerator and Boomerang. Knott's has some great rides and I think your top ten will have to be adjusted again after your visit!

It sounds like you had a great day at the park, thanks for sharing your thoughts about the rides. Other than your longer than usual waits for TC (which was probably due to it being closed for half the day), it looks like your wait times weren't too bad.

Agreed, Sea World has now become a must visit park when I go to Orlando. It's also great to see new Intamins being built in the USA, I wish CF and SF would get back on the Intamin backwagon as well!

Hope you have a great day at the park, be sure to come back and let us know what you thought of it. I am always interested to hear people's first impressions of parks and rides.

My wife took the kids on a trip for Spring Break, so I headed to the park for a day and a half this weekend. I got there about 3:30 on Saturday and saw that X2 was closed on the app. I was about to head to FT when I saw X2 testing, so I headed up the hill and X2 opened back up as soon as I got in line. My wait was only about 15 minutes and I was able to ride 3 more times with only a 20-25 min wait each time. Since the app only updates hourly, X2 was listed as closed even though it was open, so that kept people away for a while. I then headed down to TC and got 3 rides in with about a 30-35 wait each time. Of the 3 rides, I only dueled on 2 of them and it was only a single duel each time. I can't really blame the ops for the lack of dueling though as they were hustling and the panel op was telling people to hurry if they wanted to duel. The fact is that the GP just carries too much damn stuff around the park, so it takes forever for them to put it away in the bins and get in their seats. I ended the night getting 4 rides on Superman as I've found that it tends not to have a line at the end of the day. So I got 11 rides in about 5 1/2 hours, which I was pretty happy with. On Sunday, I splurged and got the Platinum FP. I live in Vegas and only get to the park 2-3 times a year, so I wanted to get the most out of my trip. It appears that SF has done away with the double rides on the Platinum FP though, which isn't a huge deal as your next ride window typically opens by the time you're done with a ride. It was just nice not to have to get back in line all over again, but I can imagine guest relations got a lot complaints about double riders. I used the Gold Pass early entry and headed straight to FT and got 4 rides in before there was really any line. I was on the first train of the day and the ops sent us out a second time bc there was nobody in line! I ended up getting 36 rides in throughout the day, which is pretty good considering there's no double rides now and the park closed at 8pm. A number of coasters had downtime (Goliath, TC, Tatsu) but they got them back up pretty quickly. The biggest surprise of the day was that Superman was running both sides, which I haven't seen in years. I made it my last ride of the day again and since it was a total walk-on after 7pm, I got 6 rides in to finish off the day. I also got to experience the VR on TNR since it was included with the FP and I have to say it's absolutely terrible. The VR adds nothing to the ride and I actually hurt my neck a bit since I couldn't see where I was going. The wait for VR TNR was absolutely awful (90+ minutes all day) as the dispatches were taking 5-6 minutes each and there were empty seats on every train. Luckily my FP had some kind malfunction and I got a 2nd reservation on TNR. So I did it without the VR and got a front row seat, which was very enjoyable with the new lapbar trains. It's just a damn shame that they added VR to it and created an obscene wait time. TNR is the perfect first looping coaster for kids, but it's simply not worth waiting 90+ minutes in line for. I did get a guest satisfaction survey emailed to me and I expressed my complete displeasure with the VR fiasco. Hopefully if enough people complain, they will get rid of the VR. But since this is SF were are talking about, I'm not holding my breath. Lastly, it doesn't look like any painting has been done on Riddler, so I wouldn't expect it to open any time soon.

Apocalypse and Riddler are currently closed for retracking and painting, so you can take those off the list. I would also skip Green Lantern as that ride sucks and it's not worth wasting the time in line. He's my suggested order: 1. X2 2. Tatsu 3. Superman Escape from Krypton 4. Ninja 5. Gold Rusher 6. Green Lantern: First Flight (only if you really want the credit) 7. Batman The Ride 8. Lex Luthor Drop of Doom 9. Twisted Colossus 10. Scream 11. Goliath 12-14. Kiddie credits 15. YOLOcoaster 16. Viper (never much of a line, should be a walk-on at night) 17. New Revolution (definitely do this last, get in line just before closing time and you will get to ride, otherwise not worth the wait)

Fun fact. Double ride platinum is no longer a thing at any Six Flags park according to the websites. All of the park websites were changed about a month or two ago to take out the double ride stuff and now only advertise a 90% shorter wait. Edit: whether or not this holds true I don't know. Also the fine print at the bottom of the sfgam site still says it's only available at select rides, even though it was removed from the main description, so, *shrug* I can confirm that double rides on the Platinum Flash Pass are a thing of the past (at SFMM). Just visited SFMM this past weekend and got a Platinum FP, but I didn't get a wristband and there was no mention of double rides. I would think that this change would be across all parks, so I'm interested to see if any parks will still offer the double rides. It's not a huge deal with the Platinum as your next window to ride is generally open by the time you get off a ride. I did a Platinum FP when I visited SFGAm last summer and got 50 rides in, including 10 on Goliath (which didn't allow double rides). There were no restrictions on how many times I could ride Goliath, I just had to get back in the FP line each time. The only ride that limited my FP reservations was JL:BFM, which I was limited to only 2 reservations. I was fine with the JL limitation as two times was plenty for me, I was mainly there for the coasters.

I'm headed down next week for the Boysenberry Festival, would be great if this was open by then!

Twisted Wiches is still listed on the dining pass guide, so either the map or the dining pass guide is incorrect. It looks like the dining pass guide is from last year though as it still lists JB's Smokehouse, which I believe is turning into the Ace of Clubs.

Agreed, that station is just plain massive! I can't imagine what kind of coaster would require a 6 story station, maybe the coaster will travel through the station at one point? Or maybe there's a pre-show or multi-level interactive queue?

Glad you enjoyed Knott's, the GhostRider retracking really made it into an amazing coaster again. It's just so fast, smooth, and relentless from start to finish. And I don't know why people hate on Silver Bullet, I think it's an underrated Invert and I prefer it to the Batman clones. I really think Knott's is going to get something big to replace Boomerang and a dive coaster would be at the top of my list. There's only 3 of them in the whole country and none in the Western US. It would give the park something unique that it could really promote to capitalize on all the tourists that will come to SoCal for Star Wars land in 2019. Plus it's been 13 years since the last major coaster, so it really is time for them to make a major addition to the park.

Robb makes a great point about Hersheypark, it really is the best park if you have kids that are 42, 48, and 54 inches tall. We went for 3 days two years ago and there really was something for everyone in the family. My youngest went on her first looper (SDL) and her first big woodie (Comet). Her favorite though was Laff Trak, which is a really fun take on the family spinning coaster. Just the fact that Hershey has four non-kiddie coasters that she could ride at 42 inches sold us on taking a trip there. My son, who was just over 48 inches at the time, loved Lightning Racer and Sidewinder (those new Vekoma shoulder straps are much better than traditional OTSRs). Then my oldest rode her first B&M invert and her first Intamins (Storm Runner and Fahrenheit), but she stopped short of Skyrush. I was totally ok with that though, as I got 5-6 rides on Skyrush each morning during the early entry. SFGrAm is actually a great park too for families with kids 42-48 inches tall. It has two 36 inch coasters (Little Dipper and Whizzer), two 42s (Demon and Dark Knight), and a bunch of 48s (Am Eagle, Goliath, Joker, Viper, plus Giant Drop). When you add in the new Justice League ride and one of the last remaining Condors, there's actually a lot for families with younger kids to ride.