Physical

Knoebels on Sunday. Second trip of the season, called a mulligan on opening day and went to Hershey after getting our rides in on the coasters. Here's hoping for a much better time this week!

Best way to get walk ons all day, start with the lower park (Steel Force first, work your way down past Stinger, hitting Revolution if you enjoy those rides, then Stinger, Possessed, Flyers if you want to ride really bad ones) and work your way up. Cross the bridge after Possessed, hit Thunderhawk, then head on over to Demon Drop and Thunder Creek Mountain. You might hit some lines near Hydra but it won't be anything major. If you time it right you can hit nothing but station waits all day. Once you hit Hydra and Talon people have usually spread out enough to ensure there's very little waits the rest of the day. Usually when you get there at opening, Talon and Hydra will have 5-15 minute waits because they're both at the front of the park. Pro tip for Stinger: Ride it in Car 4 (rows 6 and 7 in the station) In my opinion (and I know some people will disagree with me here) Car 4 is the only place to ride that coaster. Practically no headbanging, and the ride is /very/ forceful. If you dedicate yourself an entire day to Dorney, you should be able to get on all the coasters front and back. Be sure to check out some of the flats, none of them run long cycles, but most of them are still worth a ride. As for places to eat, I'd check out Burger Barn, or Center Stage Fries. Unfortunately Dorney doesn't have the best dining options, you're basically limited to chicken, burgers, and fries.

The parking lot was mostly empty the whole day, honestly don't know how that could be.

Last night, got the 2nd last ride of the night on it. Figure Dorney coasters are the last ones I rode, considering I'm there at least once a week

Clearly first gen intamin towers. Certainly no overshooting or overheating brake issues to be found on those. On a serious note, I'd say any tower that uses permanent magnetic brakes fitted on the tower. As others have mentioned, unless the laws of physics change, those brakes /will/ stop you before you hit the ground.

I was getting jarred around in the turnaround regardless what row I sat in. I've had back problems all my life though, so it might not be as bad as I think it is. 5 rides back to back really didn't do me any favors. It's still a fantastic coaster, it's just not as fantastic as it could be.

So much this. There's only 3 rough spots that I found were noticeable, with the worst one being right at the bottom of the first turnaround. My back is still sore from the trip I made out on Friday. It's not even rough as in "bumpy" it's "rough" as in "shakey" and it really did a number on my spine.

It's always possible that it was just a test run as well, and the trims were turned on way higher than they would be on a normal operating day. Look how slow it is coming into the brakes, it practically almost valley's (well, would valley if the anti-rollbacks weren't in place)

Disclaimer: I have not yet ridden The Beast Based on , The Beast was always trimmed to death.

Made my first visit of the year yesterday. Crowds were extremely light (as expected) and I was able to get on all the majors within an hour (again, as expected) Thunderhawk was running 2 trains for some reason (It wasn't nearly busy enough to warrant that but whatever) The new trains look very nice, but how much they improve the ride is questionable if you ask me. Yeah, it's smoother, but it's still rough and jerky. The new lap bars well and truly kill the incredible airtime on the first and 2nd hill. We did get lift stopped on my first ride though, apparently somebody towards the back of the train was on their cell phone. Stinger was down when I got there, but was up by the time I was leaving, it's running great this year! Car 4 has next to no headbanging, and it's the most forceful ride in the park. I hopped on the Cedar Creek Flyers because we had to skip the Flyers at Knoebels on the 30th and I was in the mood for some flyers. To my surprise, I managed to get a few good snaps in before the criminally short cycle ended my fun. All in all, pretty decent 2 hour visit. Ride list Talon: 2 Steel Force: 2 Thunderhawk: 2 Cedar Creek Flyers: 2 Hydra: 1 Demon Drop: 1 Possessed: 1 Stinger: 1

I'll pick the low hanging fruit here: Kingda Ka. Goes down at least once a day (it seems like) for various reasons. Not a coaster but a high thrill ride that also breaks down a lot: Demon Drop.

Just got home from the park. Today was /the/ day to go. They had a few buses of (I assume) high school students, probably just enough group sale tickets to warrant keeping the park open. There were more buses in the parking lot than cars. Everything was a walk on, pretty much all day. Nitro had the longest wait, at a whopping 15 minutes, with single train ops. (They added the 2nd train later in the day though and completely killed the wait) Ka and Zumanjaro didn't open until around 4PM, when the rain stopped. Once the buses started clearing out around 5, the park died completely. We managed to get 5 (I think, I lost count) re-rides on Toro during this time. The park ended up closing at 7 instead of 8, but we were there since 11, and had /more/ than enough time to hit everything worth hitting, and re-riding the best of the group. Ka was running with extra boost once it did open, which is understandable given the rain and having cold trains. Gotta say, as much as I like that "Are we going to roll back?" feeling you usually get with normal boost, I very much enjoyed the (noticeably) speedier ride provided with the extra boost. Seemed to smooth out the launch a bit in rows other than the first. Plus the airtime we were getting over the top hat was just nuts. My shoulders hurt from being flung into the restraints. Ride List: El Toro: 9 Kingda Ka: 5 Nitro: 3 Skyway: 2 Bizarro: 2 Twister: 1 Batman: 1 Green Lantern: 1 Superman: 1 Skull Mountain: 1

Slightly off topic, but... I felt the same way... last season. If you make your way out there this year, the new wood really does make an unreal amount of difference. It's glass smooth now, with a very minor bump at the bottom of the 2nd helix.

Well hopefully not, rope drop is a little over 2 hours away and signs are pointing to them opening. I'm making my way out today so here's hoping the rain doesn't ruin the day. As long as Toro and Nitro is operating, I'm happy. I'd love to get on Ka but it's not required.

It's possible on Demon Drop! It usually floats up to about eye level by the time you hit the pullout.

It might be the exhaust from the propane powered rides. Not sure I'd describe that as burnt sugar, but other than all the fantastic food everywhere, that's the only thing I can think of that would smell different than any other park.

They had a few temporary handstamp places. We still waited nearly 20 minutes for ours. I gotta say the retracking on Twister has transformed that ride into something truly special. There's one /very/ slight rough spot at the bottom of the second helix, but the rest of the ride is Phoenix smooth.

I couldn't believe how slammed the park was. Easily 4 times the crowds I experienced at PPP last fall. It was so bad, after we got our rides in on Phoenix, Twister, and Impulse (which took 2 hours) we just left and went to Hershey instead. We had to skip the Flyers and the Skooters but we ended up having a much more enjoyable time at Hershey, where everything was a walk on all night. Knoebels typically handles crowds well, but there were just too many people there, there aren't enough rides to handle that amount of people.

I agree. It was pretty much as stressful to me as waiting tables, which I also did for a bit. On paper the job is easy, but in reality, people are DICKS. It also never ceases to amaze me the creative ways people find to almost kill themselves, and how mad they get when you try to stop them. I cannot stress this enough. The amount of verbal abuse I endured for enforcing safety guidelines was just nuts. I had somebody walk into my rides restricted area more than once as well. Normally I'd just chalk it up to ignorance, but the risks are so obvious, it blew me away whenever I saw somebody hopping a fence. That is a stark contrast to my experience. Dorney rarely, if ever, fired somebody. There were employees all season that I would question how they still had a job. Towards the end of the season they started letting people go, but even then, they were firing the wrong people. They fired a longtime employee because he missed a few shifts (he missed these shifts because he has a second job, that the park knew about) That about sums up what kind of workers you get when you pay 7.25 an hour. I would love to go back and do it again, I can honestly say regardless of how terrible the job was, I had the best summer of my life working at Dorney. All the friends I made, and the experiences I got to have made it worth it. (Climbing to the top of a first gen intamin freefall nearly every morning was as awesome as you'd expect) That being said, until Dorney (or parks in general) start paying wages you can actually survive on, I'm forced to work somewhere else.

As a former ride operator, I have the utmost respect for those employed in the business. The job itself is pretty easy, but the relentless pace, coupled with /constantly/ having to deal with shitty people, makes it one of the most demanding and draining jobs I've ever worked. Not to mention long hours in the sun.

From the inside, looking further in/up. Same deal. WWK and Haunt are the real money makers for Dorney.

I'm closest to Steel Force. 2nd closest is Stinger.

The park looked great! I was going down Hamilton at around 1:30 in the morning and figured I'd stop in at the Speedway across the street and snag a pic. (It didn't come out too well because low light picture with a cell phone camera, but I'm going to share it anyway) Thunderhawk definitely stands out more than it used to!

I'm spoiled, I live less than an hour away from Hershey, 10 minutes away from Dorney, 1.5 hours away from Knoebels, and about an hour and fifteen minutes away from Great Adventure. The furthest I've driven for a coaster was 10 hours to Carowinds for Fury 325 last season. Generally, 5 hours is about my limit for a drive (Considering KD, KI, and CP are all in within 5 hours of me)

Stormrunner. The airtime in the back seat over the top hat is unmatched on any accelerator I've ridden. Kingda Ka makes for a great thrill ride, but it's too short overall for my tastes. Great kick of adrenaline though, almost always warrants a ride.