hoppedup

Great report! That coaster looks crazy good. Between three days of ERT and a Passholder Ride Night, I hope to get a few laps in on SV in August.

There is ERT on Saturdays in June. 30 minutes early for Fury 325, Camp Snoopy, and water park. Ride Fury 325 during ERT then hit Nighthawk as throughput is crap on that one. I also highly recommend Afterburn, it is indeed fantastic.

I saw a Carowinds commercial on my local station here in Greensboro, NC this morning. It was all about Camp Snoopy. I remember seeing ads on TV in this market for Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Carowinds when I was a kid but can't remember seeing one in many years. Planning to spend all day there Saturday and get my first coaster rides of 2018.

We rope-dropped Nighthawk at Scarowinds b/c we were in the front of the pack at entry and my daughter said the ops sucked. We will certainly give Firehawk a shot if we get all the others in and multiple rides on the big ones. My daughter has hated every Arrow looper except Loch Ness Monster but I loved them all. Looking forward to Vortex and a couple of other new-to-me ones this summer.

^Thanks for the feedback. I thought about adding The Henry Ford Museum or Rock n Roll Hall of Fame to the itinerary if we didn't want to do CP on a Saturday. Both involve a little extra driving and backtracking to CP but are pretty cool stops that my daughter has never visited. I just looked up Firehawk and we will be visiting its clone at SFA earlier in the summer so we can skip that one as well, assuming SFA will not be nearly as crowded as KI. I see mixed reviews of Flying Dutchmen here but i rather enjoyed Nighthawk at Carowinds. That leaves the Beast being the only ride on FL+ that would really matter as we can do two days of ERT with Mystic Timbers and Diamondback. So we may just FL on Friday and leave Saturday open to whatever. And looks like there is an exclusive ride night on Steel Vengeance on Tuesday August 21. I'm sure Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday will be enough time at CP if we FL or FL+ at least one day.

I will have the opportunity to ride three Mind Erasers this summer. It is encouraging that the one at SFNE sounds like it is actually good enough for re-rides. I'm sure I will ride at least one other one for comparison. Probably the last ride of the day, just in case.

Since my second trip of summer falls toward the middle/end of August , looks like KI will have to be a Friday/Saturday thing. If we arrive Thursday August 16th in the afternoon/evening and get 3-4 hours in the park, do ERT on Friday and spend all day, then do ERT and FL+ on Saturday, I'm assuming we'll be able to get multiples on all the good stuff? My daughter and I have little interest in flats and will be riding mostly coasters, skipping Wild Mouse, kiddie coasters, boomerangs and other clones unless they are really good coasters. Mainly looking at getting multiple rides on Diamondback, The Beast, Banshee, and Mystic Timbers. We will probably skip Flight of Fear and Backlot Stunt Coaster unless they offer a different experience than the ones at KD, as we will make multiple trips there this year. We are flexible and can bail early if we've ridden our favorites enough and can head to CP a day or half-day sooner than expected. So if the FL makes more sense on Friday, we can do that.

I've stayed at most of the lower priced places in Ashland (Motel 6, Super 8, Quality Inn, Days Inn, and Sleep Inn) and the Sleep Inn was best for the money. I just need a clean room without gunshots or crack whores knocking on the door, so I do the Days Inn or Super 8 for Wyndham points most often.

I always book rental cars through Hotwire. I have paid as little as $9.95 a day and never over $20 (GSO airport, YMMV). I have even gotten a mid-size under $20 a day. I also play around with the dates before I book by adding or shifting days. On a recent trip, I added a day to the rental and the overall price dropped. My truck has over 200,000 miles and gets about 17 mpg so the savings in gas more than pays for the rental. I have done hotels through Hotwire occasionally and did some research on other sites to figure out the hotel in advance by looking at rating and amenities. I use Wyndham and Choice rewards. If I am certain of itinerary I often pay in advance with Wyndham and get another 20% off. My two trips this summer will be somewhat flexible so I won't do that. I have found cancellation policies to be mostly generous and allow same day cancellations up to 6 p.m.

From the FAQ (I went to SFOg as it is my closest SF park):

$1,039 in 16 days. Should make $20M in around 844 years at this rate.

From SFOG FB. DeRaj has opinions:

This place is great! Six months ago I didn't know B&M from Intamin, LSM from chain lift, cobra roll from Immelman... And now I'm googling a character who rode the same ride every day at an amusement park in Ohio that closed more than ten years ago. Apparently Rotorman hangs out at a skating rink these days, BTW.

I was around 215. At 5' 8", that's getting pretty heavy. I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2016 after going into a diabetic coma while driving and having a rollover accident that somehow didn't take my left arm. A1C was 10.3. I went on 1000mg of metformin a day, completely changed my diet, and started walking around 25 miles a week. Fast forward to 6 months later, I was 155, A1C was 5.3 (non-diabetic level). I was actually looking a bit gaunt at that time, so I eased up a bit on the extreme diet. Now, I am around 170 lbs. I haven't taken metformin since November 2017 and blood sugar levels are normal. I kinda miss bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, and ice cream. But I have adapted and learned to cook a lot of healthy dishes that are really tasty. I picked up a second job on the weekends that keeps me on my feet for as much as 13 hours a shift. And helps me afford platinum passes and trips. What really motivated me was the realization that if I didn't do something, I could lose limbs, eyesight, and be at risk for heart disease and even death. There's way too many coasters I haven't ridden yet for me to allow that to happen.

Damn. I haven't ridden Fury 325 yet because it had a 90 minute wait when I was at Carowinds last October. Was Mean Streak on the FL or FL+? If so, how was the line set up?

I like to have two costumes every Halloween I am the one who knocks Time to cook

Do people really wait that long in line for a coaster? I'm thinking an hour is going to be my max. If I miss some coasters, so be it. We are planning two weekdays at CP in late August and have platinum passes and prepared to FL+ if the need arises. I assume lighter crowds if we are there after Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus are back in school, right?

Updated 2018 hit list: Six Flags America Six Flags Great Adventure Dorney Park Hersheypark Knoebels Kennywood Cedar Point King's Island Carowinds Waldameer Conneaut Lake Darien Lake SFNE Holiday World Kentucky Kingdom King's Dominion Maybe: Six Flags Over Georgia Busch Gardens Williamsburg Busch Gardens Tampa Sea World Orlando Dollywood I have two 10 day trips planned this summer. I split one monster trip into two to alleviate the death march feel. Now the first of those trips is reaching death march level again. Waldameer and Conneaut are "run in and get the woodie credits" stops, though. My daughter asked if we could go to Niagara Falls on one of these trips, so why not add Darien Lake as well? We could possibly ride three identical SLCs in one trip. Jealous yet?

I mostly stay at Wyndham Hotels because that's where I have the most points. I stayed at a Knights Inn in Glen Allen for $38.52 (taxes included) last August after KD. Then we stayed at a Super 8 near BGW (304 Second St.) for $40.85 (taxes included) the next night after BGW. If I did a KD/BGW combo again, I'd probably just do the Super 8 for two nights b/c it's just about an hour between the parks. They were definitely nothing fancy, but were clean and quiet enough for me and my daughter. We have two 10 day trips planned this summer and SFA is getting a half day on the first one, hopefully on a Saturday. I also recommend the Trapper's Smokehouse at BGW. We split the sampler and seemed like a good amount of food for $16 at a theme park and it was delicious. We sat on the patio and had views of Griffon's dive drop.

Looks like Carowinds is getting in on the admission and FL+ President's Day sale for $59.99: https://www.carowinds.com/

Georgia Scorcher was a lot better and I would re-ride that one. My daughter also hated Vortex but her friend loved it. I'm pretty sure I have a couple more stand-ups coming up this summer. We'll see how those go.

Of the 37 new-to-me coasters I rode last year, Vortex was by far the worst. I'd be okay with a floorless conversion. Or they could remove it and put ANYTHING else in its place. It is truly awful.

I will second the recommendation for Greenfield Village/Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. Coolest museum I have ever visited. You can sit in Rosa Park's seat on the bus and see the blood on Lincoln's chair.

Don't they all start with 'T'?

Afterburn BTR (SFOG) Corkscrew (MB Pavilion) Dominator Firechaser Express Goliath (SFOG) Intimidator Lightning Rod MIndbender Nighthawk Rebel Yell Swamp Fox Thunderhead Volcano Wild Eagle Will hopefully be able to fill this list out this year!