LukeFlynn

I've never tried bringing food in, but never had an issue with drinks. The security people are usually very friendly and not overbearing or suspicious. YMMV. .

Well, it was intended as sarcasm.

Since when are "the people at Red's" a reliable source for information? I only trust the Dippin' Dots guy across the street. Evidently the grill cook used to be a ride op on Blazing Fury, so he's got connections.

Heard from the people at Red's they were only running half a train to reduce the stress on the track.

I'm only about half an hour away from the park, and even I don't go nearly as often when LR isn't running consistently. I'm just not willing to wait in the humidity for anything less honestly... as much as I love the other coasters, I've ridden them all dozens and dozens of times more than LR (and I'm close to 30-40 rides on LR).

Dollywood is indeed great without LR, but it's really sad that the park's spotlight, highly acclaimed coaster has such poor operational consistency. I understand occasional, even frequent downtime... but even operating only a few hours out of the day would be better than being closed for 20 days only to go back up for 10.

If that were the case, they would likely perform the inspection in the maintenance bay anyways.. but still, that could be one reason.

Unless it's open for almost every day of the month, I think we should all just stop placing faith and hope in it. It's much less disappointing that way.

They didn't run any test cycles at all once opening from what I can tell, definitely none once I was there. I'm still hopeful we have better luck than we did a month ago.

Just overheard that LR is closed for the day. The app confirms this.

I'm here. LR is listed as TC with the operational consistency sign posted in front of the station. From the looks of it, both trains are on the track. I haven't seen it test yet, but ride ops are up there now.

Amen. I'm heading there in about an hour... I don't know whether to be hopeful or not, I've only ridden it twice since it's been back up. The whole prototype, experimental, first of it's kind, yada yada stuff was acceptable last year, but we are WELL into the ride's second season... enough is enough RMC, Velocity, and Dollywood. I'm not shifting blame onto any one party here, I'm just saying that it's getting more and more embarrassing as time progresses.

I'm pretty sure Lightning Rod is sinking, maybe not as quickly as Magnum, but it's definitely sinking.. that mountain can't be sound enough to hold it much longer.

Well that's fairly abrupt after being up almost all day yesterday minus a few hours. Hopefully they're putting in effort to get two train operation consistent.

+1 When LR is closed, I usually find myself marathoning ole' Tornado. Actually, I do that anyways.

Two trains would probably make the fast pass system more manageable, but with LR it seems to be a mess in any case.

LR being a ground up and not a conversion has little to do with the issues.

It's rare to find it up without any closures on any given day... the length of the closures varies from 15 minutes to several hours. The only exception is right after they finish doing a bunch of work, then it works well for about 2 weeks and repeats the cycle all over again. This is pretty much how it's been since day one.

At this point we should all just move on from the theatrics and enjoy how great this ride is without letting insignificant rumors cloud our judgement.

According to various sources, they're supposed to attempt relaunching after a rollback.. but they never do. In April, I witnessed a true rollback.. they evaced at the bottom, re-secured the restraints, and relaunched the train. It crested successfully... they tested it for about 10 cycles then opened back up... was open for the rest of the day. Rollbacks on this coaster always scare us because it's so temperamental.. when in reality almost all of the downtime I've experienced this year was never the result of a rollback.

It is a terrific night ride, as is Tennessee Tornado. It's super dark during Smoky Mountain Christmas.

When I was there on Sunday they were only running one train, I was a bit surprised seeing that the crowds were actually decently heavy.

I hate to sound like a dismissive jerk towards the guy, and I also have to admit, regrettably, that my oldest son spends way too much time watching Coaster Studios' videos, but who the @#%$ really cares about what some kid on the internet says!?!?!? I mean, from the park's perspective... Outside of the very small group of people known as coaster enthusiasts, nobody is really even aware of CS' existence, and I doubt the parks can hardly be bothered by what he's saying. There's so much opinionated dreck on Youtube, that if reputable companies bothered themselves worrying about what every hack on there said, they'd go crazy! So yeah, while I see what you're saying, I guess my point is that in the grand scheme of things, this whole "problem" that was manufactured about the slower launch, was only an issue among a very miniscule portion of people, and nobody here, honestly, should ever take anything CS says with more than a grain of salt. This is true, I hadn't thought about it that way.

All of the BS rumors against the ride by the GP and some enthusiasts just give the ride an even worse reputation. Speculation is one thing, but unfounded rumors (especially of that magnitude) bother me. Someone like Coaster Studios should really get lots of sources to back up the statement before reposting stuff like this. It gives the park, RMC, and anyone else involved a bad wrap.

I hope it's able to stay up.. but if history's any indication it'll go back to it's old self in a few weeks.