Arthur_Seaton

Bummer. I'm hoping it gets yanked in the next couple of days as I'm thinking this week will probably be one of the better weeks to visit in terms of smaller crowds and whatnot.

Indeed! Although I didn't hate the ride as much as I expected to, it's a stunning structure — especially walking through it.

Yeah, I watched a few reports and they were calm, accurate, and informative given what info they had at the time. Nothing to get enraged about.

Isn't this week supposed to be one of the busiest times of the year for SoCal theme parks in general? A friend wanted to go to Knotts today, but a quick peek at previous years' "Is It Packed?" data suggests it would be an absolute zoo. The fam and I went to Disneyland a couple of years back in the week following xmas, and the park completely sold out around 12pm. You couldn't move at all in Main St. Grim.

That is fantastic news! While I'd like to think they've come to their senses, I suspect it's maintenance related. They probably need time to scoop out all the bacteria and chisel the encrusted mucus out of the masks

I've only tried a Fabbri Booster (the one that used to be over by the Space Needle in Seattle) and I found it relaxing too. I expected it to be awful / horrifying, but I remember really enjoying it and rode it a few times. I distinctly remember enjoying siting at the top and feeling the structure wobble around, but that same sensation terrifies me on rides like Lex Luthor. Perhaps it has something to do with restraints, but these rides don't freak me out nearly as much as Star Flyers or drop towers. They're more like Wind Seeker models to me for some reason, which I also find relaxing.

Perfect! Thanks! I'll be there on the 24th so chances are I'll miss out, but I'll keep trying to get in touch with the park to double check.

But no months (aside from two dates in January) are on the calendar for 2017, so, following your logic, that's a lot of closure for 2017!

Is SFOT usually closed in February? There's no listing on the website's calendar for this year and last year's calendar seems to be missing the month altogether. I tried calling the park but it's just a Kafka-esque message relay system that hangs up on you. I've also emailed the park to ask but I'm still waiting for a response to the email I sent them last year, so I'm not expecting a reply I'll be in the area late Feb and wouldn't mind swinging by for a few hours if possible.

It does make sense (in a nonsensical regulatory kind of way), but I also saw Sierra Sidewinder doing the same a few weeks ago — one empty train being cycled and one being filled. I figured it might have something to do with distribution of wear, but I couldn't justify why that might be the case. The staffing rationale you note seems consistent with how the rides are run. However, Xcelerator always seems to have at least 6 ops on duty, whether the ride is running both trains or not. Could it be the double restraint checks they do on that one?

I think it may be nostalgia or familiarity, but I still really enjoy SFMM's Goliath. There's nothing overly intense about it, and the drop's astonishingly tame compared to how it looks, but I find that the ride delivers in terms of fun, speed, and smoothness (Titan, not so much, which was notably rougher when I rode it). In contrast to many others, I'm not a huge fan of Skyrush — which was far too much about endurance than fun in my opinion. I understand why people love it, and I'm down with some intense ejection, but it didn't feel like a well-rounded ride to me — more like a pummeling. Similarly, I wasn't a huge fan of the Arrows that I've ridden — mainly because they emphasize pre-CAD coat hanger-style roughness. Desperado was fairly painful, but Magnum was worse. While I really enjoyed Nitro more than I expected (my first B&M hyper), Diamondback is probably my favorite out of the hypers that I've ridden, and is close to the top spot of my favorite coaster overall. The long-sustained floater air, repeated over several hills, combined with solid speed, smooth ride, and great visual impact ticked all of my boxes. I much prefer to float out of my seat than get body-slammed by restraints.

Thanks for the tip! After reading your message, I bailed on work and drove down to the park. Arrived about 4pm and rode an embarrassing amount of rides in the 4 hours I was there. Ghost Rider was basically a walk-on all afternoon / evening, and really only a 1-2 train wait for the front or back (with two trains), so I got 8 rides in. The ride seems to be breaking in a bit now with a little bit of roughness returning, but that's just in comparison to when the reboot first opened and is in no way a complaint; it's still way smoother than most woodies around — and tons of fun. Rode Xcelerator, Supreme Scream, Monte, Silver Bullet, and La Revolucion a ridiculous amount of times without ever having to leave the station / train. One thing about La Revolucion, though, is that if you happen to be on the downside looking up on each swing, the ride's not that intense. The way it rotates is such that your position remains largely the same, so you either get an airtime-filled ride from it, or you get to watch the people sitting opposite you having more fun. I guess speeding up the rotation would produce more variation, but that would probably make the ride more nauseating too. Anyhow, great mini-trip to the park and will probably try to squeeze in a couple more before the year's out.

I loved Valravn —in fact I thought it was one of the best rides in the park. It wasn't particularly intense, but a coaster requires more than just mega intensity to win me over (fun, for example) and Valravn hit all the right buttons. I thought it gave an excellent ride, had just the right amount of intimidation factor, and looked incredible while watching from the ground — which, let's face it, is a huge part of what makes rides popular. For example, Gatekeeper's visual spectacle over the entrance to the park is really one its best features. The restraints didn't bother me one bit, and in fact I much prefer them to the older B&M restraints because of how open they are. Although there are other rides I'd also like to see in the park, I do hope the SFMM rumors are true that a version of this will replace Viper. Corkscrew, however, was miserable. It looks great where it's positioned, but the ride itself was atrocious. The only other rides that I'd file as once-and-done were Wicked Twister and Rougarou. Maybe it's relative to where you sit (I sat in the middle), but Wicked Twister did nothing but disorient me. I found Rougarou's first half to suffer from what many big-inversion B&Ms suffer from (kind of dull), and the second half to be surprisingly rough (seems to be a minority opinion though).

That sucks. Given how quiet the park can be in the off-season though, I can't blame them for wanting to cut back on operations and staffing and whatnot. The past few times I've been, GR has had a consistently hefty line whereas everything else in the park is a walk-on. Waiting 90-mins for a ride is, ultimately, the norm during the busy season, but it just feels odd when everything else is <10 mins. Of course it's not Knotts' job to pander to the likes of us who'll go on slow days to just marathon the same ride over and over, but I hope they can do something to make the ride a little more efficient in the future. Despite such annoyances, it's still a very good roller coaster.

You mean inside the building or all the way out toward the entrance? Chances are they're not using many switchbacks on the top floor, but still that sounds like it's at least a 90-minute wait if they're only running one train. Hopefully they have two running, then it'll be closer to 60 minutes.

Yeah, I'm sure the capacity drop has something to do with the removal of that brake. Obviously, we don't know the logic behind it, but that drop that followed the brake became one of the most iconic aspects of the ride because of its intensity. The irony is that today, due to the reduced weight of the new trains (I presume at least), that drop feels surprisingly more tame than before. Even when taken at full speed, it seems to lack any of the gut-churning effect it was so good at producing in the past. There's some ejection in the back seat, but it's nothing like it once was, so slapping a brake back on there for purposes of capacity probably wouldn't affect the way the coaster rides right now. Take one of those ridiculous brakes from the end of the ride, stick it up on the turnaround, and then set it to "off"!

Several already mentioned in this thread, but certain drop towers still freak me out — no matter how many times I've ridden them. The S&S ones don't bother me because they feel so robust, but I have a persistent, irrational fear that the track on a ride like Lex Luthor could just peel away from the tower after having its bolts loosened by a few too many Superman launches. The anxiety of drop towers is all anticipation, though — the vertigo-induced feeling of insecurity combined with the suspense of the release tends to border on unpleasant for me. I'll still ride them all, but often it's just to check a box. Star Flyers have a similar effect in that while I really enjoy the Windchasers (I find them relaxing), the feeling of fragility on Star Flyers keeps me from fully enjoying the experience. Even though I rode the SFOT one multiple times in a row, the swinging / spinning of the seats freaked me out every time. A few people mentioned Cyclos at KK — and I skipped that one based on how it looked (those Fabbri Evolutions look similarly unpleasant to me). I kind of wish I'd at least tried it now, but it did look more unpleasant than anything. Also mentioned was the rock-o-plane. My anxiety with that ride stems from riding it as a kid and feeling like I was being faceplanted over and over. I rode one earlier in the year at Sandy Lake in Texas and did everything I could to keep the car from flipping. My fear was that if it were to flip, I'd never be able to get it to stop in the upright position for the rest of the ride and would spend the next 2-3 minutes feeling like I was having a panic attack in a washing machine. Last, and not quite aligned to the topic as it's not really a ride but worth noting: the Exorcist maze at Universal Hollywood really surprised me this year in just how much it freaked me out. I love cheesy dark rides / haunted houses and will go through them over and over if I have the chance, but I found this one to be incredibly intense from start to finish. I was very aware of my elevated heart rate and even found myself wishing it would end at one point. In that regard, it was a fantastic maze, but I found it truly terrifying.

It may have something to do with staffing / security checks, but in the last few times I've visited and ridden, it seems to be partly due to the station design (the general congestion but also the fact that there are designated cubbies for bags whereas on Apocalypse, people just leave their stuff by the that wall next to the train). On Ghost Rider, the riders who just exited the train are milling about on the platform, grabbing their stuff while the next train's riders are waiting for them to finish so the ride op can slide the partition across and let them put their stuff in the other side. Aside from that, I've observed a surprising amount of "walks of shame" and people just hanging out on the station platform rather than boarding the train or exiting. So I think it's a combination of things, but the glacial dispatches combined with long ride, that ridiculously slow new braking system, station design, and the GP's lack of basic awareness all work against efficiency. Apocalypse usually has several staff members in the line on busy days grouping the crowd before it enters the building, so the station is never really that crowded. Ghost Rider's station is always congested.

Part of the problem is the station layout. Ideally, they'd benefit from a grouper as the area in front of the gates bottlenecks and people can't access open seats. Plus, there's a different path for the last two seats that people seem oblivious to, so the ride ops often have to pull people from the gates and stick them in the back — otherwise it runs empty. Capacity has been atrocious since the reboot -- not that is was ever fantastic before -- but if they're just running one train, it takes like 30 minutes just to get through two small switchbacks.

I have to agree that removing the 3D sounds like a good move. I rode with a friend a few weeks ago who had never ridden before, and he commented afterwards that he thought the projections seemed low budget and blurry when compared to something like Transformers — and I could see his point. Although it certainly doesn't keep me from riding, the ride does make me feel fairly dizzy — partly due to the motion that feels more like being on a boat than flying, but mainly the eye-adjustment required to go from darkness to a 3D screen and back again in quick succession. I like the ghost train-style sections the most with those cheesy skeleton things bouncing around as they're a bit easier on the eyes.

Another stealth run to Knott's today to take advantage of the off-season and milk the last of my platinum pass. Aside from Ghost Rider, everything was a walk-on during the time I was there (2:30pm to 6pm) with instant re-rides available on pretty much everything. With only two of the upstair switchbacks filled with people, Ghost Rider's line still took a solid 35 minutes to board. Can't blame them for only running one train on days as dead as this, but operations are hideous on that ride now. There was a craft fair thing going on which pulled a small crowd into Ghost Town, but I guess this was a free event and the rest of the park was closed off to attendees. Silver Bullet was down for rehab (it was a little rough the last time I rode it a few weeks ago, so hopefully it'll return in better shape). Ghost Rider actually had a little roughness on the turnaround above the station, but I only noticed it in the front seat. Nothing a quick rehab won't fix. Anyhow, in the time I was there I rode: Ghost Rider x2 (Back and front, but still much prefer the back) Pony Express x1 (Meh) Boomerang x1 (Ugh) Xcelerator x3 (Still surprised how little mention the airtime on this gets — seems quite extreme to me) Montezoomer x2 (Old faithful — I love that creeping launch) La Revolucion x3 (One of my favorite rides there. I find this thing more forceful and thrilling than some of the giant frisbee rides) Supreme Scream x3 (Nobody there, so back-to-back rides it was) Log Ride x1 (While I often enjoy visiting parks by myself, riding log rides solo feels kind of lame) Sierra Sidewinder x2 (When the train returned to a completely empty station, the riders chanted "one more time! one more time!" — and the train was sent around one more time) Jaguar x1 (I was the only rider!) Iron Reef x1 (I usually skip this as I think it's lame, but there was nobody there at all so I just rode it without the glasses or the gun and scoped out the various screens and sets). I've been to Knott's more times this year than I've been to the park in the last 10 years. I bought the platinum CF pass because I knew I'd be visiting Cedar Point and Kings Island, but I've really got my money's worth out of it. I'm tempted to renew for a regular Knott's pass as days like this — when the park is really quiet — it's nice place to just hang out and chill. Boomerang looks monstrous from this angle. Didn't ride this time, but Calico looks great all lit up. The craft fair event was a nice touch. I can't imagine this working well in too many other parks. It was basically all of Ghost Town. Still one of the most intense (yet fun) rides I've ridden. This is what most of the queues were like today. One of the best rides in the park with some intense floater airtime. A lonely ride on Jaguar. Even though Silver Bullet's first drop doesn't impress, the ride still has some height to it. The boardwalk theming, while a tad sparse, works well. Despite how phallic several of the rides there are.

When they first re-opened the ride, you had the option of skipping the VR and walking straight to the fast pass entrance. My guess is that because lines were starting to build in the fast pass lane, it reflected poorly on their brand-new, hi-tech experience in that people would rather opt out if given the choice — which, I assume, is why they killed the single rider / front row option completely. With that said, the GP eat up the VR stuff, so it's a lucrative investment overall. I've only ridden two VR rides (Shockwave and Revolution) and in both cases throughput was utterly decimated, largely due to tech failure. Anyhow, according to singemfrc, SFMM has reverted back to their original line-skip operation now, which is very good news (although news that I missed). They didn't have the signs up when I was there a few days ago, so perhaps they just haven't formally announced it? The last few times I've asked (about a month or so ago), I was told they stopped offering VR / line skip options, so it's good to hear they've returned to that. I'll be sure to head out for some dedicated Rev marathons over the next few days. Definitely agree that a polite request would be more effective than aggressive demands. Or move the VR experience to one of the smoking areas, the restrooms, or perhaps that bus thing that goes back and forth from the parking lot? Just get it off the rides please — especially the classic ones

I like it too. B&M invert drops don't do a whole lot for me, even when they're steep (Banshee, for example), so the long, gradual slope into the loop doesn't bother me at all — I kind of like it. Broadly speaking, I like Silver Bullet more than any of the other inverts I've ridden, though. The ride has a good variety of forces and elements, doesn't belabor you with intensity, nor is it cookie-cutter B&M.

The projection was on when we were there — it's toy conveyer belt of some kind, but it's kind of dimly projected. The snow machines were on but they were jammed up, producing big globs of foam that slowly dripped from the trees. Overall though, they did a really nice job in the steampunk area.

You can ride it without VR, just ask. In fact often you can skip a good portion of the line by doing so. Since the refurb, I've only ridden without the VR, I can't stand it either. Really? That's how it was when they first opened it — you could opt out and ride in the front seat without having to wait two hours. However, they stopped offering that soon after, and now the front seat is usually left empty. The last few times I've been, I've asked and was denied (about a month ago), so maybe they've gone back to allowing non-VR riders to skip the line? I watched it cycle a few times last night and nobody was in the front seat at all for any of the trains (although they were only using 50% of the seats in general), so maybe it hasn't been announced formally?