hoppedup

It seems like the ride closure schedule would only be necessary at year-round parks. Carowinds just added that to their website (It is still blank right now). The only other Cedar Fair park websites with that option are Knott's Berry Farm and California's Great America. CGA just has what was closed during Winterfest. Maybe it will just show ride closures for holiday events at Carowinds? Seems like the open attractions list would take care of that.

The Comfort Inn at the Park is nice and you don't have to cross Carowinds Blvd. on foot. There is a Clarion, Quality, and Sleep Inn on the other side of Carowinds Blvd., so you have a broad selection of Choice hotels really close. If the south gate is open it would be a shorter walk from any of these. It looks to be 0.6 miles as the crow flies from Comfort Inn to the main entry plaza. And .33 miles to the south entrance.

Makes sense. For some reason, I thought it ran for a while early last year.

Looks like they took down the ERT calendar and posted this in its place: * Exclusive Ride Time for Copperhead Strike and select Camp Snoopy attractions begins 30 minutes prior to park opening. Carolina Harbor Early Entry begins 30 minutes prior to the scheduled opening of the waterpark. Waterpark attractions will open at the scheduled waterpark open time. Sa-weet! Would be nice if they had more than one coaster on ERT, but I'll take it. https://www.carowinds.com/tickets-passes/season-pass-early-ride-times

Was Volcano on FL+ last year? It was when we visited in 2017 and it saved us a lot of time. We just dropped in late one night last year to ride Twisted Timbers so we didn't check. Volcano was down most of the year anyway. It's not listed on the FL+ list now, which is probably last year's list.

My daughter knows the drill now. We check in, leaving luggage in the car. We completely strip beds and pillowcases and lift mattresses, inspecting every square inch of mattress, pillows, and bed coverings. Haven't seen a bed bug yet, but if we ever do we will promptly go to another hotel. When we bring our luggage in, it stays on hard surfaces. We also leave the Do Not Disturb tag out or the card that says we don't need bedding/towels changed, since we rarely spend more than two nights in one room.

It seems that Cedar Fair parks' FL+ usually has the best, if not all, coasters on the list. Would it be a safe assumption that Copperhead Strike will be on FL+? I just noticed a 'Scheduled Ride Closures' option under the Explore tab on the Carowinds website. There are currently none listed, but I don't remember seeing that option before.

I stayed at the Milan/Sandusky Super 8. It was cheap and on the higher end of quality for a Super 8.

They just posted some renderings and overhead map including the 2020 coaster: http://www.hersheypark.com/chocolatetown/map.php

^Agreed. I have never reserved the preferred parking we get with our Diamond SF memberships. At SFFT, we parked closer to the entrance than the preferred lot was. I think the longest walks we've done were SFOG and Dollywood, and they weren't bad at all. We even skipped the tram at Dollywood just to get more steps. I did 11 miles walking at Cedar Point in one day. My daughter and I did 12.5 in one day on our Texas trip. I tend to arrive at the park well before opening and have never had an issue. I often park near the back of parking lots just to get more exercise.

Awesome, thanks for posting. Looking forward to my annual May visit! Hmmm Water park looks to remain with the 6 or 5pm closing in August and Septemeber instead of the 7pm closings of yesteryears. Also no full week of operations during Winterfest this year, however looks like they will open at 4 instead of 5 on Sundays this season and the 2pm openings will remain on Saturdays. I'm cool with. I think the calendar is subject to change. Especially in regards to ERT. The current calendar shows ERT for Fury 325 as 3 weekend days in August only. It was the same way last year and wasn't updated until closer to opening day, IIRC.

Carowinds March 23rd. Copperhead Strike!

^^ I only noticed the lights on Windseeker because my daughter's friend asked why it wasn't running. I guess I missed the rest of the Christmas decorations because we had our coaster blinders on. Can't wait for March 23rd to get on Copperhead Strike.

^Yup. Windseeker was closed at Scarowinds, as they had already strung the lights on it for Winterfest.

Now, wasn't that easier? Another quick response. And a great answer!

I meant the difference between a FL resident buying a pass at BGT/SWO and a non-resident buying a pass from BGT/SWO. Kinda pointless to keep speculating. I just shot them a quick email. I'll report back.

I'd shoot them an email. They were very responsive to me. There was nothing anywhere that said I had to be a resident of Texas until after the passes were purchased, so I was definitely going for a refund if it wasn't going to work at all. It's my gut that parking is only at your home park. If SFFT and SFOT weren't close, it wouldn't even have been a consideration for me. That said, now that I know how much fun San Antonio is, I'd do it again. Then again, it may actually be different if you are from Florida. Looking at BGT's site, the only difference between Florida resident passes and visitor passes is that residents can do EZ Pay.

The verbiage is a little vague on parking on SWSA and SWO's websites. It does say that free parking is not available at Aquatica or Adventure Island in Florida on SWO's membership benefits page. Then again my pass order receipt says my pass is only valid for Texas residents and that was not an issue. We are going to be visiting BGW, BGT, and SWO this year, and my daughter is going to SWSD, so we should get our money's worth even if we have to pay for parking. It says this about free tickets on SWO's page: I'm going to visit these parks without expectation and just be happy if we get any perks.

Carowinds is my home park but it's still 1.5 hours away, so I doubt I'll ever go to Winterfest unless I happen to be in or passing through Charlotte for another reason. It's all about the coaster lineup to me, and Six Flags seemingly crushes CF on that aspect with their winter events. Lights are pretty but provide no g-force or airtime. I understand closing off an entire area of a park like some SF parks do. But it's cruel to open Ricochet and have Fury 325 sitting idle right around the corner. And yes, I get it, holiday events are for a whole different crowd. Adding Fury OR Intimidator OR Copperhead Strike next year would probably get me in the door. Which would generate zero revenue for the park since I have platinum CF passes and dining plan. I'm sure if they thought opening more big coasters would generate more revenue they'd be doing it.

I rode 85 new coasters this year with The Great White at SWSA being the most recent. Not bad for skipping Wild Mouse coasters, boomerangs, and a lot of other clones.

Thanks! It really was a nice park. I look forward to going back for a full day. Thanks! I think I almost prefer Iron Rattler to Steel Vengeance among RMCs. I am looking forward to daytime rides next time. At Sea World, I want to say that there were animal viewings early in the day, but the shows all seemed to start later than we wanted to stay with a trip to SFFT one day and wanting to get on the road the next day.

Day 5: Return to SWSA and the Hell Drive We woke up Friday morning looking forward to better luck at Sea World with the coasters. We did some shopping for kitschy crap for my daughter to take back to her friends. We also had the last great breakfast we'd have in Texas. We went to the Original Blanco restaurant downtown and the machacado was great here, maybe better than Pete's. And cheap, taboot! My daughter ordered a side of country sausage to go with her pancake. The waitress asked, "It comes with gravy. Is that okay?" Why, hell yeah, that's awesome! They mistakenly put it on my plate. Here in NC, country sausage with gravy has an entirely different meaning from San Antonio, apparently. It was like a sliced kielbasa with tomato sauce. Still tasty. Machacado at The Original Blanco Cafe Our return trip to Sea World was much more promising. There was a light breeze and temps were upper 60s. We hadn't seen Steel Eel testing since we arrived and got a little nervous. No worries, it was running with no one in the queue. We took our first ride front row as the only people on the train. Wow! Even with the MCBR working overtime, the airtime was still amazing, IMO. We were able to move around and try different seats, as there was almost no one in the park. Front row was the way to go, as the cars towards the back slammed you back to the seat after every airtime moment. You could minimize it with some defensive riding, but couldn't get rid of it altogether. The Great White was a solid B&M invert, but it and Wave Breaker only got one ride each. Obligatory sign photo The Great White Steel Eel Maggie approves of all hypers And that's a wrap! Around 2:30, we'd ridden Steel Eel many times and decided to hit the road for NC. Houston was truly awful even after stopping for dinner to avoid the worst of rush hour. We stopped for a few hours sleep somewhere north of Mobile. Atlanta was Atlanta, but then Greenville, Spartanburg, Gastonia, and Charlotte all decided to be Atlanta as well. We didn't even stop in for SFOG or Carowinds. We were that tired. We had originally planned on ZDT's, Kemah Boardwalk, Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, Park at OWA, and SFOG on the way home but our schedule changed. My daughter loved the trip so much she wants to do it again next year, so we'll get those then. The schedule change allowed for the touristy stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday, so it actually worked out for the best. That's a wrap on 2018. Can't wait for the multiple trips we have planned for 2019.

Great report! Taking a couple of days off from coasters and doing touristy stuff definitely made our last trip better. Can't wait for our California tour in 2020.

Day 4: Final Mission, SWSA (almost) and SFFT We awoke Thursday morning with a few hours to kill before Sea World opened at 1. We visited the last mission we had skipped the previous day on the Mission Trail, Mission Concepción. The frescoes they have uncovered were really interesting and the highlight of all the missions we visited. We did a little shopping and ended up at Sea World right around opening time. The wind was gusting like crazy, probably in the 40-50 mph range with sustained winds probably 20-30 mph. I had my doubts about any coasters running and they proved correct. We walked around the park to get our bearings for a return trip the following day. Turns out it was pretty simple with all three coasters grouped together. Moose out front shoulda told you... Some of the trees were blown over We took a loooooong lunch at the BBQ place across the highway from Sea World and then ventured over to Fiesta Texas. I was worried that the coasters wouldn't be running there either. The wind had died down quite a bit, though, so I was hopeful. There was a pretty big line by the time they let us in. We met an enthusiast and his mom and chatted for a bit. At rope drop we headed straight to Wonder Woman for a couple of rides. What an awesome coaster! Definitely a unique experience all around. I remembered we had a free digital copy and print coming to each of us because we are members. Obligatory sign photo Wonder Woman at night Maggie approves of this one as well Superman wasn't running (and never did) so we moseyed over to Iron Rattler. No signs of life there either. So we queued up for Roadrunner Express. Best mine train ever, even if the style, theming, and track color didn't quite match the other Arrow mine trains we've ridden. While we were waiting for Roadrunner, we looked over and the Iron Rattler train was coming out. We waited in line for it to open. Testing took quite a while, but omg was it worth the wait. Talk about a relentless RMC conversion! Easily the best coaster of our trip. Iron Rattler gave us the happies! Bert was right about that last car! After a couple of rides on Iron Rattler, we decided to just walk around and check out the lights and grab dinner, since we have a dining plan. I was satisfied with our visit enough to call it a day on rides and worry about catching the rest of the coasters next year. This is a beautiful park and the interaction with the quarry wall is super cool. Projection on the quarry wall

One of the guys on the field said it was strangely slow. There was one other family out on the field. We got there when the tours started, though. I think the stadium just has a lot of events booked this time of year. The Texas high school football championships started the day after we were there.