LukeFlynn

Tennessee Tornado at Dollywood! I rode it about 10 times in a row waiting for LR to open.. which never happened.

Or the fact that you feel like you're gonna rollback in the first row of that first loop.. every single time.

I love the banked curve right after the crest of the lift... and how that first drop just sucks you in.

Those are some really amazing pics.. I think TN Tornado is highly underrated, the only thing I don't like about it, is the constant one train ops, it's ok on slow days, but it seems even on busy days it's only one train. Thanks! I agree, I usually see them up it to two trains on Saturdays or very busy days in the week. I've witnessed it twice this season so far. Part of the problem is staffing, they allocate 4 platform ride ops. Two of them are in charge of checking the restraints of the first 3-4 cars, while the other two are for the back of the train. They have to do this to avoid stacking trains, which causes problems with overheating the friction brakes so I've heard from various personnel at the park. Also, if you do happen to get stacked you SLAM the brakes really bad if a train is in the station because they actually have to bring you to a full stop. They also slow down the chain lift in two-train operation to give the ride ops an extra 30 seconds to check and dispatch. They work extremely hard to avoid stacking, it happens maybe once per 45 mins... it's an art form to watch the 'Tornado crew on busy days. The last few days of the 2016 season they brought a bunch of the LR ride ops up (since it was down) to have enough people.

Pretty consistent with wait times, but they take forever to update the operational status. I waited for a good half hour on Wild Eagle for them to do some cleaning up.. and it said less than 15 minutes the whole time. We've had a lot of melancholic talk of LR lately (justified, but still).... here's some photos I took last week of Tennessee Tornado! All photos shot with Nikon D700 + Nikkor 80-200 2.8 AF-D (two-ringed). Straight out of camera raw conversions with a bit of color correction.

Was up and down all morning, now CD.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think LR has once again fallen into the unreliable category. It's going on 4-5 days since it's been open... this is how it was acting back in late 2016. "TC" for half the day until they finally just admit it's not going to open.

Drop Line is really fun! I would consider it fairly forceful.

Pete is probably citing the FULL days it was down, it's not uncommon for it to open and then close 5 hours before the park. I am not going to give that FB comment much attention, I'm sure all maintenance people are under strict NDAs with HFE that prevent them from disclosing as many details as that. I've never heard of a ride having water pumped through the track... I'm not even sure how that would work, even though LR is launched, I doubt it experiences very different forces than the other RMC toppers after it's crested the lift hill.. The trains use the same setup for launching and braking, so I highly doubt they are going to re-engineer the trains for a non-LSM launch. I do see them abandoning Velocity's LSM technology, however.

GP don't really hate on it as bad as some of us can, I know it's a massive PITA, but I think it more than makes up for it.

I'm not saying it's a bad ride, or it's unbearably rough.. but it's just not as smooth as it used to be.

Sorry, but I agree with the others. TH has gotten rough, it's a great ride with a great layout... but I would not consider it smooth. That wasn't always the case though, it's well over a decade old now, and I don't think it's every had a full retrack.

I'm heee today as well and can confirm it's busy for a weekday. The rides are too crowded though, just the park. LR has been down for almost 2 hours, there was a train stopped at the launch.. they put one in the maintenance bay after that.

I didn't realize Wildfire was originally supposed to be floorless. I wish more parks would order some classic B&M sitdowns.

A terrible investment that just so happens to be widely accepted as the best coaster in the world right now.... It might be down for a bit, but at least it's open more than it's down this year. No doubt it's still made a boat load of money for DW. All coasters close for maintenance, unfortunately LR just needs a lot of it. If we get to a point where it's closed for two week stretches like last year then we can really complain....

POVs don't do any ride justice IMHO.. especially something like Lightning Rod. That said, I have been amazed by POVs only to be let down by the ride experience before.

People tend to flock to it in the morning when they arrive, then work their way up to MM and Wild Eagle. It's usually got a decent crowd in the morning.. that said, it's running really rough lately.

It's 1PM and everything except Blazing Fury is listed as "CD"....

Hopefully Drop Line does really well it's opening year and takes some of the heat off LR's issues last year.

No holding on... Get the original experience, before they added the sissy bars... I for one will never use them. They're much more helpful for securing the restraints IMHO, they're useless on the ride!

Exactly what happened Sunday.

Yeah, they would load a train, get everyone's restraints checked and then they would just tell everyone to step back inside so they could perform maintenance. My guess is the ride is constantly reporting statistics to the PLC system and it gives maintenance warnings to the ops or something, after this happened a 3rd time some maintenance guy came up and started working on the brake run.

LR was up and down very frequently yesterday. They would load a train and then request everyone step back inside the gates just before dispatching... this happened twice to me, and I witnessed it a third time. It was rare to get through an hour without it going down. It's definitely operating more consistently than last year, but I don't think they're quite to the finish line yet.. all of these little hiccups are starting to come out of the woodwork. I'm still keeping a fairly positive outlook on it, the profound negativity from some people (especially enthusiasts from other circles of the inter-webs) annoys me.. Don't get me wrong, I get it... but it's still a great ride either way. 'Tornado runs two trains pretty much every Saturday if they have enough people to staff it, it actually had a longer wait than Eagle yesterday... which is odd for a Sunday.

I prefer the forces in 'Tornado's back seat... but, when you sit in the front seat, you feel like you're going to get a rollback every time through that first inversion! Both spots are worth a ride! LR is going to haul a$$ no matter where you sit. I can't say which I prefer, they're both different.. give front and back BOTH a ride. Wild Eagle is better in terms of forces in the back, but it's also a bit on the rattly side.. The front literally feels like you're flying. Thunderhead is great in the back, massive air time.. but it can be a bit jarring.

At least this time around they're actually acknowledging that it has a problem and not just trolling us with "TC" until 6PM.... I was really starting to get annoyed with them acting like the thing didn't even exist last year.