Carowinds Discussion Thread

[tndank]

Man, CF is starting winter ops EARLY this year!

 

[coasterbill]

I get it, they're closing off the path from the right side of the front gate back to Rock N Roller for staffing and the paths back to Afterburn. It sounds terrible, but I guess it's better than being closed. Maybe they'll under-promise and over-deliver?

 

... lol

[tndank]

Pathing does make sense.  Didn't even think of that.  Probably keeps the crowd down a bit as well.

 

[boldikus]

Why would a park thats in the business to make money be attempting to keep the crowd down a bit?

God, CF sucks so hard anymore.

[coasterbill]

"To promote social distancing we've made our event lineup absolutely terrible so nobody wants to go"

... easy, efficient, no need to mess around with reservations, they really are playing chess while the rest of the industry is playing checkers.

[KIEnthusiast]

3 hours ago, boldikus said:

Why would a park thats in the business to make money be attempting to keep the crowd down a bit?

God, CF sucks so hard anymore.

What about the Orion

at King’s Island

doesn’t suck

[boldikus]

Yep you're right. The Orion definitely does not suck as much as your weird and endless attempts at haikus.

The one almost rhymes, but not quite. But under no circumstances should you let that stop you.

[hoppedup]

So I re-upped my CF Platinum pass for 2022 this week and just checked the Carowinds site to make sure it showed up. Maybe this is a temporary glitch?

 

[AmyUD06]

Which park's site did you do it through? I remember something about Canada's Wonderland pass holders getting an extra year, but that's not even that far. I'd print that out, put it in a safe, and run with it.

[hoppedup]

I bought through Carowinds, my home park.

[coasternut]

^^^ I have the same thing with my Cedar Point Platinum pass. I bought it earlier this week. I'm sure a glitch.

[tndank]

Website indicates Fury 325 will not run during Scarowinds. 

Good move or bad move? 

Dont worry, Hurler will be open. 

[coasterbill]

I'm going to assume that this is a mistake. Right? Right?

[SharkTums]

^This is not the year to ASSUME anything!!!

[Alex26841]

2 hours ago, tndank said:

Website indicates Fury 325 will not run during Scarowinds. 

Good move or bad move? 

Dont worry, Hurler will be open. 

Hmmm. I'm not even shocked honestly. Although I should be. 

Disappointing though, for sure. I'll probably head over this Sunday then to get a few more rides since that will seemingly be it's last day of operation for 2021. 

[hoppedup]

17 minutes ago, Alex26841 said:

Hmmm. I'm not even shocked honestly. Although I should be. 

Disappointing though, for sure. I'll probably head over this Sunday then to get a few more rides since that will seemingly be it's last day of operation for 2021. 

They could run it during the day sessions. If Hurler is running they are not blocking off the path to Fury.

[tndank]

Website now updated.  Fury is now included.  

[coasterbill]

Bonus days look fun...

 

 

[hoppedup]

I Iog in every once in a while to check on whether my 2022 pass expiration date has changed from 2023. It hasn't, but now when I click on my 2021 pass it says it expires 12/31/2022. That definitely changed since the last time I logged in. Probably still a glitch, but curious.

[abovethesink]

My son and I took our first visit to Carowinds last Sunday and Monday. The temperature hit 98-100 both days and I was really anticipating having a problem with that, but honestly we didn't, at least not in the way I expected, Here is how it went for us:

Sunday - 8/29/21

Presented in the order we experienced them...

Nighthawk - We hit this one immediately after rope drop because of having read about its capacity issues. I was expected it to be terribly uncomfortable and didn't expect getting placed in the back row to help all that much. I was very wrong. This is a good ride! I don't get the hate at all.

Intimidator - All B&M hypers are very good in my book and this one is no exception, but I would place it pretty low on my rankings of B&M hypers. The trims were pretty ridiculous. Why does it kill off so much of its own speed on purpose? Still an excellent ride though.

Harmony Hall - One of our party members wasn't feeling well so we dipped into the AC of Harmony Hall and had lunch. I had a Turkey Burger, which was fine I guess. Nothing special, not terrible. Nice space though and there was live music.

Woodstock Express - Charming little family woodie. I did have a weird experience though. I did not fit in the front seat (5'9" 230 lbs) due to the seatbelt, but the seat behind it clearly had an absurdly longer seatbelt so I hopped back to it and was fine by a wide margin. Kinda strange.

Afterburn - This is a high quality and intense B&M invert. Very good ride that lived up to its reputation.

At this point unfortunately our party member not feeling well was pretty much out of commission. We decided to go grab a ride on Fury so his girlfriend could ride it with us before taking them back to where we were staying. Accordingly, we turned around in that direction.

Fury 325 x2 - AMAZING!!! This is now in my elite tier of coasters with El Toro, Voyage, Wicked Cyclone, and Phoenix. These rides were incredible. Powerful, great and interesting airtime, fun twisty sections, incredible first drop that goes forever... It is near perfect. We loved it so much that we hopped back into the relatively short line to grab a second ride before taking the couple out of the park.

We were out and back pretty quick, maybe 40 minutes tops. At this point we were down to just me and my 11 year old son and we decided to continue down the direction Fury is in.

Vortex - Uh. Not good. Not good at all. I can somewhat tolerate a standup and don't absolutely hate say Green Lantern at Great Adventure, so I thought this little guy would be fine. It isn't. It brings all of the discomfort of a standup without any elements worth experiencing. This is the worst ride in the park.

Ricochet - This was a wild mouse. Nothing really notable about it. I did find the swinging turns slightly more painful than I have on other versions, but it was probably just running a little faster due to the heat. This would become a theme in time.

Carolina Cyclone - This area of the park needs some help. Prepare for headbanging. Get your credit and get out ASAP.

Hurler - Why? This is kind of low key a hilarious ride. It tracks so poorly that it should be extremely rough and painful, but it doesn't actually do anything so it never actually gets rough and painful. That was a lot of pointless meandering. Strange ride.

Carolina Goldrusher - This is a nice family coaster for kids stepping up, I guess. It was just a credit for us.

Flying Cobras - I was dreading this until we got in line and saw the vest restraints. It doesn't run as well as say the one at Hershey, but it is still night and day thanks to the restraint improvement. They should really all have these.

Copperhead Strike - Wow. This is not what I expected. I swear I have read that this is not a super intense ride, but it very much was during our visits. I think that running all day in nearly or exactly 100 degree temperatures had this thing FLYING. I did not get the consistent hangtime I see described and in videos. We FLEW through the inversions and had massive airtimes and extremely whippy turns. Great ride.

Kiddy Hawk - Thanks to RCDB we realized this was the only non-kiddie credit missing so we snagged a ride on it. I positioned by hands to stop the headbanging and it turns out there isn't anything else to these family rides! We just wandered around the course for a bit and that was that. Probably a nice ride for kids if they can tolerate the head banging.

Harmony Hall 2 - This time I had a turkey leg. Or I tried to, anyway. It was too difficult and messy to eat in that setting so I only had some of it. The mac and cheese I got with it was good at least. Again, this is a nice space, had live music again, and the AC was wonderful on the hot days.

Fury 3 - With the park about to close, we darted to our third and final Fury ride of the trip. I gotta say... This was much worse. Still a great ride, but my god was this thing going significantly faster than it was on our early midday rides. We went through the elements so unbelievably fast that it was all sort of a blur and just felt like a little too much instead of perfect. This was probably due to the heat not only in terms of the trains moving faster on the track, but also had me exhausted at the end of the day in it.

Monday, 8/30/21

I definitely was not looking forward to this "Bonus Day" and probably would not have gone if my 11 year old would have been fine with laying around all day. But he wasn't, so off we went...

Copperhead Strike x6 - We decided to rope drop Copperhead Strike right and noon and that was a good decision. There was nobody back there but us and a couple other people. We would hit the station, get on, go through a cycle, and then be sent around a second time without getting out of the seat. They would only let you ride twice in a row though, so we had to circle back around twice which wasn't a big deal. Our first two rides we slower and more hangtime filled, but the last four were more like the one from Sunday. I like this ride a lot.

Flyers - I didn't ride, but my son did and there was a guy snapping the cables nonstop. That was fun to watch. The ride op didn't care.

Giant Swings - Not gonna look up what these were called, but they provided a nice view of the park. My kid has been strangely afraid of these even though he will ride any rollercoaster, so it was fun to finally get on one. I had to agree to ride the boomerang during the day to get him on though.

Observation Tower - We put our mask on to get photos of the park from the tower. The glass was a little dirty, but it was worth the trip up for the views while being able to take photos.

Harmony Hall - I had the Turkey Burger again. This time we missed the live music as they were finishing their last song of the set as we walked in.

Intimidator x2 - Intimidator had a minimal line so we hit it twice in a row. It seemed to be trying to run faster than the day before, but that just meant the trims hit even harder to get it down to the speed they want it at. I want to stress that this really still is a great ride though.

Night Hawk - Gotta say... This was less good this time. Still loved that first ride, but that was at rope drop and this one was after it had time to really warm up in the heat. It was run much faster and more aggressively and I got thrown around more uncomfortably. I was also in an outside seat instead of an inside seat, so maybe they contributed too. I still liked it though, just not as much.

Flying Cobras - I owed the boomerang so we backtracked to it. It is what it is.

Intimidator x2 - Again we got two rides on Intimidator, back and front. Again they were fun. I was pretty much tapped out at coasters at this point, so I relaxed outside on a bench after these rides and let my kid cycle a couple more by himself. He got 3 or 4. There were station waits only.

All in all, I ended up enjoying the Bonus Day a lot actually. Seems like it is so bad on paper that no one bothered showing up and we got to ride Intimidator and Copperhead Strike as much as we wanted. Can't complain about that.

Other Thoughts

Just a couple quick things: It was nice being in a Cedar Fair park. Living in the northeast, we don't get that opportunity often and end up at Six Flags all the time. Everything was open and running two trains that could. Fury was running three on Sunday. The food lines were short. There was a lot of shade and the park was clean. 

In multiple stations ride ops kept talking about their throughput stats which was really awesome to hear. In Copperhead and Intimidator especially, they were clearly trying to run trains as fast as they could. That was really cool.

One negative though: PUT BINS ON FURY and CS. Why the hell are people made to hold on to potentially dangerous loose articles on the most aggressive rides in the park? Are they trying to get someone hurt? I mean obviously on paper they are going for increased throughput, but I don't know how much of that is realized because of rider confusion about the policy anyway. On top of that, it is dangerous! It also feels like a likely money grab, but we just left our drinks by the exit in the shade so I never checked if the lockers cost money. They were always there when we came back. I used my zipper and button pockets to hold everything else which was a little uncomfortable but tolerable. 

 

[AmyUD06]

Photo TR: Sunday, September 5th, 2021

Knowing that long drives are always less fun when you're headed away from your destination, I decided to split up the trip home from Atlanta and SFoG with a quick stop in the Fort Mill, SC/Charlotte, NC area for Carowinds, a park I hadn't been to since 2019.

I arrived at a little before 10:00, for an 11:00 opening, and was decidedly not first here.

I got in, parked, and marveled at the mass of B&M visible from the parking lot.  Intimidator's new paint looks great.

And Fury, as actually intimidating as always.

Man did it feel good to be back at a CF park.

Anyway, made my way in, grabbed my Fast Lane wristband, and camped out at Intimidator, waiting for it to open.  I was on the first public train of the day.  Back row left seat.  Did not disappoint.  I could've sworn I rode this during my 2019 trip, but my spreadsheet didn't show it, so here it is now.  Good amount of airtime, despite the trims.

I then hopped on Woodstock Express, to see if the rebuild had done any good....and was again on the first public train of the day.  Back row.  The rebuild has improved it, but amusingly they only did the back half of the ride, leaving it two different shades of purple.  That said, it seemed to be entirely new wood everywhere that was worked on.

My next stop was Afterburn, again for the first public train of the day.  Back row left.  Totally forgot how intense this is.,

Then I took a ride on Boo Blasters; I had never been on this one and now realizing that the KI and KD ones were different, wanted to try it out.  Much more like the KD version, without the rotating seats.  Got a score of 1318, and amusingly was required to wear a mask since it was indoors.

Next up was a walk-on for the back row of Copperhead Strike.  I can't remember if I got on the back row during the 2019 trip, but it was definitely good.  Love the hangtime and little pops of air.

The park was setting up for Monster Jam...

...and Scarowinds.

Took a lap on Carolina Cyclone to try out the "new" Vortex trains.  Front row.  The Vortex trains definitely improved it, but it's still an old Arrow looper.  Can't imagine what that one pop of airtime that slammed me into the OTSRs would be like in the back row.

Then got on Scream Weaver, my first Schwarzkopf Enterprise.  SOO much better than the Huss models.  Ran a lot faster, got virtually completely vertical, and stayed there for like 10 rotations.  Completely missing any sort of lighting package, but it doesn't matter when the ride is that awesome.  The operator could certainly use some work though...after the previous cycle ended, he walked the entire queue, asking people how many were in their group and how many cars they'd be sitting in, keeping a count of how many people he would need to let through onto the next cycle.  Why not just do that as you're loading and save the time?  Oh well, still an awesome ride. Nerd shot:

After that, it was time for my #4 steel, in Fury 325.  Front row, awesome speed machine.  Nothing more needs to be said, but here's a picture of it's awesome logo:

I went to grab some food from the awesome build-your-own Mac & Cheese place that used to be near the Skytower, but it has apparently since been turned into a burrito joint, so I had to settle on some from Harmony Hall.  It was still quite good.

I then waited 40 minutes for Ricochet, the only adult coaster here not on FL, and also my only missing credit from this park.  Whatever, it was a wild mouse, and I'd been on the identical Ricochet/Apple Zapple at KD.  The line probably would have only taken 30 minutes or less if it weren't for the slowest crew I've ever seen.  I do think this station and sign are a lot nicer though.

At around 2:00, I ventured into the water park (my 2019 trip was during Scarowinds and it was closed), to find the lazy river and one of the tube slide towers closed.  Spent some time in the wave pool and did the two tube slide towers that were running, then headed out around 4:00 to check in to my hotel.  Parked in front of me was a SUV with a quite comical stick figure family on the rear window:

After check-in, it was totally my intent to go back to the park and get some more laps on Fury, but I was beat.  The past two nights of 4 and 5 hours of sleep had taken its toll, and I was in bed by like 8:00.

All in all, a good stop at a park I don't get to visit anywhere near enough.

[VF15]

Looks like bags will not be allowed in the park during Scarowinds.

[tndank]

Great way to speed up getting in to the park.  I'm for it.

 

[boldikus]

The comments on the Facebook post about that, good lord.

[AmyUD06]

Just now, boldikus said:

The comments on the Facebook post about that, good lord.

Haha you probably shouldn't be bringing a baby to Scarowinds.  It's a separately ticketed event there so no excuse.