AndCamSS

I think the point was that the majority of people dont like the ride. There will always be people that like a ride no matter how bad it is. Go on youtube and look for POV of Grizzly at CGA and check out the comments. There are quite a few people that say they like the ride on there even though the majority of us think its boring as all hell.

I go to Kings Island every week in the summer, ride anything except Diamondback first! It will be an 1-2 hour wait. So are you saying that the DBack line has a full queue and spills all the way around the kids area or back past the Beast? Just curious because last year I waited around 35 mins with a full queue and that line would have to be ungodly long to be over an hour. Unless they were running 2 trains of course. CP crowds pick up more as June goes on. Stay away from the park on Saturdays between Mid June to Mid August if possible. The middle of the week is best for CP in the summer. I go in May and September the most to avoid this but obviously everyone cant do that!

I saw some of the trees covered in lights on Saturday behind the Eiffel Tower on the pathway that leads to The Beast. The former hedge-like clock was also covered in lights. None of these lights were on yet, and they were the same type used at Cedar Point for their Starlight Experience.

I last rode this in April of last year. It was the first time I had ridden it since 2004 so I was curious to see what it was like without the loop. Just as I had figured, it was horrible. I used to say "At least the loop is good" so without it, and the fact it was still real rough made it crap. Converting the track to the steel ala Texas Giant would probably make it a smooth ride, but even so it wasn't very good to begin with so do you want to spend even more money on that? First drop, first double helix (if smooth), and the loop were ok, but the rest of the ride is boring. How many helixes do you need? I thought the first one would be great if smooth and maybe if it had a tunnel, but then you are just repeating the end of The Beast at a more severe angle. It is probably best to just take it down, find some use for the wood, and start over with a new ride. Maybe they could turn the ride into mulch and sell it to enthusiasts looking to buy anything!

Well, it is the Virginia Gazette--one of the worst papers anywhere. ^I recall Screamscape mentioning something about an indoor, themed drop tower for BGW a while back, but I can't find it on there now. I think something along the lines of Phantasialand's Mystery Tower would be pretty cool. You also gotta love how its a "Tower Coaster" too! Wonder if this paper would refer to a carousel as a "Walking Horse Coaster".

Wonder what type it might be. An Acrophobia type would be great!

GO HAWKS!! I am going along with the playoff beard like the players do and I gotta say, its weird to have if you don't normally have one!

Don't over think or over worry about asking people out. If it doesn't work out, oh well someone else will come along. I lucked out and am with a girl who loves coasters and parks that formerly worked at SFGAm when I did (but I didn't talk to her back then). She was not the first though, I was previously with someone for 3 years that was a total wack job!

This is one of the ways I got around to knowing more about other parks since back when these specials started coming out everyone wasn't all over the internet getting information. The only bad things about them is when the same ride is featured in many specials, and when they get the most crazy people possible to talk about the rides (like the guy with the colored beard and hair for example). Can they not show any normal looking people so those watching the coaster shows don't think all who ride coasters are freaks? lol

Im feeling lucky I got to ride Flashback, I have only been to SFMM over a period of 2 days in 01 and 3 days in 02 and it was open in 2001! Would have been a sweet ride if they could have retrofitted hyper trains or something like that on it.

Wow sweet deal Colin never saw your page about the car til today! Good luck!

Looks pretty sweet hopefully ill get to ride it sometime the next decade lol

Yeah I did ride Gobbler Getaway near the end of the day when the line was down to about..oh...4 people in line! I hate to say it but to be honest I found it to be kinda lame. I like dark rides, especially the interactive ones but the fact that you were using a caller may be the reason there were no lazers to use as a guide to shooting at the targets. Seems like it will be fun for the kids though.

So this is the 1st time in years I have written a TR so bear with me. After all the hype for Voyage, watching the animation, seeing the on ride video from media day, and hearing unheard of good reports about it from people who rode it, I HAD to go on it NOW. I didnt want to wait another 2 weeks for Holiwood Nights and figured it would be good to go now so that I could get a decent amount of rides on it. From what I heard, 1,800 people have pre-registered for HWN so I knew that after hearing how absolutely good this ride was I wouldnt get but a handful of rides on it during the event. I live in the western Chicago suburbs, so HW is a good 6-6.5 hr drive from me. My girlfriend Nicole and I headed out of Chicago around 4:30pm on Friday. As many of you know, the traffic in Chicago can be real horrendous at rush hour, this day being no exception. I tried to take a few back roads to avoid the congestion only to delay us even more. It ended up taking us 2.5 hours just to get out of Illinois! Yes thats 30 miles in 2.5 hrs! Oh well what can you do? The rest of the drive was smooth sailing at 80 mph, so we ended up arriving at our hotel which was about 40 miles from Holiday World at around 12am. I woke up in the morning full of anticipation! Could this ride REALLY be THAT good?? We left the hotel at around 9am and got to HW ride before opening at 10. The day at Holiday World started with a shocker. Up on the entrance gate a sign read: "The Following Attractions will not be open today: Gobbler Getaway, The Voyage". I couldnt believe that we drove all the way down for this ride and it was gonna be closed? I even saw it test run on the drive over! There had to be something up with that so we asked the guy at the gate and he said it was just opening 30 minutes late...whew! Voyage opening late actually kinda worked out nice because it gave me a chance to take Nicole on the other 2 coasters and get a last ride on them before the face of the park changed after a ride on Voyage. I kinda wanted one more taste of what will now be known as the "Old Days" when it was Legend and Raven heading up the park. First up was Raven, then the Legend. We rode both of them once and MAN were they slow! I guess thats to be expected because it was 10am on a cool day but I had just hoped theyd be running a little better than they were. I knew that if we came back later in the day theyd be running a lot better as thats how it has always been with those two, and most wooden coasters. Finally it was the moment of truth. We walked down into the Thanksgiving section which was still not complete and being worked on. Im sure that when its all said and done this section will fit in nicely with the rest of the park. Voyage had not yet opened, so we joined the other 30 or so people waiting at the entrance. A couple things I liked about the area near Voyage: The entrance and exit are within a few feet of each other, making walk arounds for rerides very simple, and also the restrooms and pepsi oasis are located directly across from Voyage. The point is, if you are marathoning Voyage on a dead day you dont have to spring far from it to get refreshed or relieved, more so than it is by Raven and Legend. At about 10:40am the line opened and we made our way up into the station and got in line for the back row, which I had heard is the best seat on the ride. The station and Queue is nicely themed with Nautical items such as fishing nets and ship steering wheels, i felt like I was in a big seafood resturant! After a train or two we were getting on our first ride, something I had been waiting months to do! Before even riding I was convinced this would be my #1 wooden coaster. My current favorites were Hades and Thunderhead and just by the looks of this ride I thought it would blow them out of the water. Im a fan of coasters that are fast, and have a combination of airtime, Out of Control feeling and directional changes, and some laterals forces so this looked just up my alley. After taking my first ride on Voyage I can tell you this, it easily took the #1 spot. Every second of this ride is a good one and I loved it! Then I remembered how much Raven and Legend warm up after a few hours and thought it can only get better! Nicole and I continued to ride it for the next 2 hours, waiting about 1-3 trains for each ride. Even in those 1st two hours I could feel it warming up...at this rate I could see it becoming my favorite coaster EVER if it continued like this and thats not even including night rides on it (which have to be INSANE) that will be had at HWN. After our 5th ride, an incident occured that I had never been involved in, and no one I had ever been with at a park had ever been involved in (no its not an accident!). After getting off the ride, Nicole went to get her purse that she left on the shelves on the exit platform. Just as she went to walk away from it BLEUUAAAH! This teenager puked all over the station floor. Luckily it was a pretty liquid puke and not a chunky one (how many of you get grossed out my barf descriptions? lol). However, not only did this kid puke on the floor but puked all over the back of Nicole's sweatshirt, legs and sandals! Even I who was standing next to her got a few pink drops on the back of my jeans...gross! Luckily I had another long sleeve shirt in the car for her to wear because obviously that was the end of that sweatshirt! The catch phrase the rest of the day was "I got puked on." which we said to sound like Stifler in the movie American Pie 2 when he said "I got peed on." So anyway after a couple more rides (they kept getting better) we walked away from Voyage to go eat, get the clothes from the car, and ride Raven and Legend another time. I was happy to see two things when we went back to the other coasters: 1. They were running a lot faster like they normally do and 2. Despite Voyage being WAY better, it didnt ruin the experience on these two. After reading other TRs about Voyage blowing everything away, I was afraid that all other wooden coasters would seem real slow and tame. Im happy to report this is not true, I still love these rides the same as I did before Voyage. So now its a good hour or so after our last Voyage ride, how much better could it have gotten?? It got so good it is now my favorite coaster I have been on, beating out the ride I thought would be impossible to dethrone, Superman Ride of Steel at SF New England. The back seat is the place to be on Voyage, and thats where we rode the majority of our rides at. The front was still good, as were the rest of the seats but nothing to me was better than the back 4 rows. Here, FINALLY, is my desription of the ride when riding it midday in the back seat..... The beginning of the ride starts with the 3 hills over 100 feet. This part of the ride is very similar to the beginning of Shivering Timbers in its heyday (98-00). You get air for an extended about of time plunging down all three of these drops. Next comes the Tremors-like tunnel, hill, tunnel...this hill floats you over, barely at all in the morning but gets better as the day goes by..it REALLY reminded me of one of the hills on Avalanche in Wisconsin Dells, gives you a good float but doesnt eject you out of the seat. Now that im mentioning that, ill mention this, Voyage does not have strong ejector air like you will find on some of the other wooden coasters. Im talking SFOG Cyclone drops, or for steel coasters the SROS hills. Its all about floats, strong floats and some jolts on Voyage so if thats not what you like it may not be as good for you. Anyway, back to the ride. Next is the hill before you go into the turn around. This is probably the tamest part of the ride but, IMO, doesnt take away anything from the rest of the ride. After this hill you go into the INSANE ASS turnaround that to me blows away the end of the Raven just as an example. It starts with a jarring left hand turn then back to the right while on a hill combo, throwing you up to the left as you go over it. You then head down the hill a bit and suddenly drop a second time giving you another great dose of air. After this you head into a left handed powerful turn, similar to the ending turn on Raven except this one had a bunny hill like element in the middle once again tossing you out of the seat. After that comes the most screwed up track on the ride id say, the small bunny hop/turn that is banked in the wrong direction. If you have been on Hades there is a turn like this on the return run tunnel except on Voyage you get some oddball sideways air at the same time. You then transition into the 2 90 degree turns which are a lot of fun and head into a sick like double down/ left hand turn before flying through another tunnel and up into the block brakes. The block brakes are not on AT ALL. They are WIDE OPEN and dont do ANYTHING. After that you hit up the triple down in the tunnel each drop having stronger floater air and each drop getting deeper. You burst out of the tunnel into 2 great floating air hills and then hit up this oddball hill thats a combination of one of the other hills and trick track (sort of reminded me of what the good GCI coasters do coiling through odd little turns). You then make a right hand turn under the structure of the 2nd hill and then turn back to the left and cross under the lift into the final 90 degree turn. After taking that turn the train seems to somehow gain a bunch of speed before entering the insane ending sequence of turns and tunnels. I counted a total of 22 airtime moments on this ride, along with countless moments of laterals (most of which come at the same time as the air does). To me, they couldnt make this ride any better. Nicole and I ended up with 39 rides on it and we are both totally sore. However, I can not wait to ride it again and especially at night when HWN is going on. I cant imagine how INSANE thats going to be. Anyway, after our day was over we were totally beat but still had to drive all the way back to Chicago and got back home around 2am. As Im sitting here typing this whole long ass trip report my neck, arms, back and legs are completely sore but I couldnt be any happier! Thanks for reading!

Yessss! The update finally comes!!! I dont even remember making the god awful buck-toothed pig face, but it SO fits with the park!

Hey Robb! Corey, Scott, Kyle and I are still waiting for the Dells/SFGAm photos!!! Hav you accidentally skipped over this trip??? Andrew "Haunt looks pretty cool" Hartman

Nice pics! Yay! I see the back of my head next to Corey and his pink shirt!

Wow! That ride looks awesome but Damn! another one thats 900 miles away that looks cool as hell! This and Voyage are certainly leading the way for great new rides for next year.

Yeah, this whole situation seems kinda odd to me too. How did they not think of it before they bought and installed the ride? Seems a bit strange to think theyd plan the ride out, know what they were getting, put it together and go "oops! we cant evacuate people!" Does look kinda cool when you see the random cars go by on the track as theming, but it would be nice if they added an attraction that at least uses this rides station and queue. Like the other guy said, a grinch dark ride is a great idea!

^If you mean could anyone go the answer is yes, just so you pre-registered for it before i think September 4.

^Hey, they actually have 4 wood coasters. Glad to see a ride that has a capacity better than like 50 an hour will replace Ghoster Coaster. Glad I got that credit as that was all it was worth. Something tells me you wont see those Caprio coasters soon at all with PKI and Legoland removing theirs. Good move for the park IMO, and id LOVE to see that kids section as a kid!

Sweet! Here's hoping its topped off by next weekend when I go to the Coasterbuzz event. There will be a photo walkback of the construction area and ill be sure to get some pics for TPR!

Aww man! Robb, buddy, you need to get the pics from the Dells up soon! If I remember right there were quite a few good ones!

Damn! I was hoping they wouldve included at least a GOOD ride with that! Maybe SROS at SFNE.......right Corey????? (Inside Joke)

Just thought id leave a TR about the rideworld event at Dollywood. I arrived at the park with Corey Jessup and Scott Schaffer around opening at 9am. We got to the registration booth to get our tickets and were shocked to hear that only 19 people signed up! OMG were we gonna get a lot of rides that night! There were, however, a few changes due to the low attendance. The ERT was cut to 1 hour (which I didnt mind except the fact we wouldnt get to ride it in pitch black) and my favorite thing which was that we got $12 Food vouchers allowing us to buy whatever in the park we wanted for lunch and not just get the standard group fare of fried chicken, potato salad, gravy , and whatever else you typically get. The park was totally dead compared to when I last went in April last year. We went up to Thunderhead first, where we found a line of people that didnt even fill one train. This would be Corey's first ride on it and I told him "ok, this is gonna run like 10 times slower now than later on". After our first ride I was laughing so hard at how slow it was running. If Thunderhead ran like that all the time there is no way in hell this would be my #1, or even a top 10 for me. After 2-3 crawling slow rides on Thunderhead we headed all the way back to Tennessee Tornado, which also sported no line at all. The Tornado has to be the smoothest and maybe the best arrow looper built. Makes me wonder how their rides wouldve been had they continued to make them. After lunch, we went back toward Thunderhead and after riding it then, I had decided that Thunderhead must be the coaster with the biggest possible change in speed over the course of the day. The difference was ridiculous. If you went to Dollywood in the morning only and rode this ride, you have basically not ridden it yet, or at least not when it runs like it is supposed to. In fact, after we left the park that night we watched the TPR POV of it and easily noticed how much slower it was running at the time Robb filmed it (I hope you guys rode this later on in the day and didnt just do a credit..film..run!). The rest of the day consisted of embarassing ourselves by riding the Veggietales coaster, falling asleep on the train, taking pictures of each other with the "signature move", and the typical goofy crap you could expect if you went with us 3. When the park closed we immediately started the ERT on Thunderhead (once they removed one of the trains). I have to give TONS of credit to the other 16 Rideworld members that were there for being so un-ACE like. Supposedly Dollywood cant allow riders to ride twice in the same seat for some odd reason so instead of making everyone get off and walk around they let up basically play musical chairs each time the train came back to the station. Everyone moved up one row each time they rode and once you got to the front youd go to the back of the train etc. This was an ERT unlike anything id seen at ANY ACE event. They took away 1 hour of ERT, took off a train, didnt have a group meal, made everyone change seats and NO ONE COMPLAINED! It was AWESOME! Not only that but EVERYONE liked the seat rotation idea! The crew at Thunderhead was one of the best you could ever have. They cheered, they took turns riding with everyone, and they turned off the lights in the station when the train came roaring through once it got kinda dark out. Overall a GREAT trip to Dollywood and a GREAT event. Well worth our 10-11 hour drive back and forth from Chicago. Thanks to the great staff at Dollywood and Rideworld for making that day a blast!