Photo TR of our 14 days of rollercoasters in the Usa

[Immelman]

Haven't looked through all the pages but there's some very good pictures just on this page. I think Kennywood looks really cool and I want to ride Phantom's Revenge...seems like my kind of coaster. But we are going to Hershey on our road trip instead.

[hansrubens]

So we were up for our second day of Hershey Park. Only to ride Fahrenheit.

 

Well as the most of you will know by now it got stuck on a testrun in the cobraroll and I didn't get the oppurtunity to ride it as we were leaving at 2 o clock heading for Knoebels.

 

Here are some pictures.

It seems like such a great ride.

Too bad...

This was at about 2 o clock. It didn't like they were going open it up today so we were heading to Knoebels.

Pulling through has started

Getting the cable installed

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Getting the pulley's installed

a crane showed up at around noon.

After a few hours talking...

When it was testing I already thought it wass crawling through that cobraroll

After a few seconds I saw that train we got send away by some park cops.

But hey what the heck is that.

I can't wait for it to open.

After two seconds we got in line.

Well that line isn't to bad.

Queuing up before opening of the park.

[hansrubens]

After the big disappointment at Hershey park wee arrived at Knoebels.

 

I've never seen such a weird park (even in Holland).

 

It's like a big campground with some carnival rides and two excellent coasters.

 

on to the pics

Last picture of the day. Tomorrow we will be visiting Dorney Park.

but still a great coaster

Well not better than Phoenix

Also a great ride

The twister.

Wow

Ferris wheel

^ See

It is a drivethrough dark ride. It was entertaining. So I guess it was ok.

The Haunted house

What happened to this carrousel

Random rides.

Log flume.

Second missed credit of the day.

Their still not finished Flying Turns

No comment

Station picture

This was such a great coaster. It had airtime on every hill.

First ride of the day: Phoenix

Yeah were at Knoebles with some live entertainment which actually was quite good.

[Groteslurf]

Alright, because I'm a day behind, here my updates :

 

5/23 & 5/24 : Hersheypark

 

Very nice, beautiful and clean park. At some rides though the ride ops really suck big time.

Superdooperlooper ops are great and get the trains out very quickly. But at Great Bear the train still has to leave the station when the other train is already back waiting to enter. At Trailblazer they've only put one train on the track while the park was packed with schoolgroups. Stormrunner was running with 2 trains only. I don't know whether there are more trains than 2 but still, the ops took their time to load and check.

This was also the first park where at most rides they wait to open the gates until everybody from the train before is out of the station.

 

5/24 : Hersheypark day 2

 

Cobra roll valley on Pharenheit

As we still had to visit Knoebels, we decided not to stay any longer. When we drove off the parking lot, train was still in the same position.

And another 20 minutes later

Another 20 minutes later.

Moving further. Time between each pic is now approx 20 minutes.

Train moving.

The guy on the right of the pic was some big shot at Hershey and was obviously completely stressed out. He wanted to have the area near the cobra roll evacuated and as we were sitting there, he told us : "NOW is a good time to walk through". Maybe he was not happy with us taking pics of the stalling.

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Once the crane arrived at noon, they started working with the other machine which was already there since the beginning :-/

A lot of talking before action.

a test train stalled in the cobraroll.

However ....

All set for the official opening.

Today : we were this close to being first in the park. Not really, because resortguests could enter at 9 already.

Hershey after dark.

^

It's a pitty this one is blurry.

The busy ride op at Stormrunner.

Ace couple

Ready for opening. Bye bye test dummies.

Still running great during testruns

This is what the ride op was doing while the train was running. Just standing there.

Second train of Trailblazer.

Awesome elements

Stormrunner is great.

I love the sign the ops give to the dispatch op.

Great Bear again

Skytower with kisses windows.

Superdooperlooper was good and very good ride ops.

Great Bear

Comet

^

We also did the chocolate tour darkride outside the park.

This was a nice shooting darkride

Missed credit

Lightning racers

^

Wild Cat

Raft ride

[CHILLERLC1]

With you guys there this is international press coverage. Maybe they will need to install a valley platform there.

[DenDen]

This is an awesome trip report!

 

To answer your question about the Phantom, before the "do over", it was an extremely intense ride. But for a lot of people, that meant it was too rough. (The OTSRs were a tad brutal, especially when exiting the corkscrew!) I'm suprised it lasted 10 years, since Kennywood had so many "strained neck lawsuits" during it's history. (Pittsburgh has a few too many ambulance chaser lawyers, they used to stand in the parking lot, looking for people holding their necks.)

[Groteslurf]

5/24 : Knoebels

 

This is a great park. A very relaxed laid back atmosphere and 2 great woodies.

Twister is ok.

Phoenix is awesome

Flying turns : 2nd missed credit today.

full parking lot

[Groteslurf]

5/25 : Dorney Park

 

After the Fahrenheit disappointment of yesterday, it was time today for Dorney Park.

 

We expected large crowds but lines were very ok. Talon is the best ride in the park.

Talon : the best ride in the park. For me, a top 5 B&M inverted.

I can't believe how wet all the waterrides in the Usa are.

Hydra : the inversions before the lift hill is weird.

Steel Force is better then Magnum : no pain.

Thunder Hawk : I couldn't believe they timmed the train to death on the second bunnyhop. The 3 remaining hops are taken without speed.

Voodoo : we liked Wicked Twister better. The "hang second" is great though.

Entrance

[hansrubens]

May 25 Dorneypark

 

The crowds were very light today at Dorney so we took our credits and moved on.

Coaster cafe.

Corkscrew.

Immelmann

OMG zero G's

Coming out of the loop

Loop

First drop

It was more forcefull on the 3rd row than on the first or last row.

Now let me take you through all of it's elements.

Station pic.

Talon

and it has a helix through one of it's loops

It's a double loop Schwartzkopf

Laser

It maybe not my best B&M coaster of the trip but it was a great ride.

It got some cool elements.

Lifthill

and it's got an inversion with some excellent hangtime prior to the lifthill.

Hydra was my first BM floorless

See that girl. Yeah you really will get soaked.

More heroes. You get much more wet on the American waterrides. In Europe they will turn of those waterfalls as soon as you get there.

Heroes

Splash

Some of the waterrides

Waterpark slides

A fun little coaster with decent moments of air.

Next up was Thunderhawk.

Station pic.

and got some nice airtime hills

First drop... Those Morgan hypers are really good.

Lifthill

Steel Force was awesome

Yeah Wild Mouse

First ride of the day. They only let two people per car in it.

Dorney entrance

[RIP Psyclone]

I heard that Fahrenheit did finally open later that day, so maybe you guys should have stayed! Seems like you had a fun day at Knoebel's, though. Can't wait to see the rest of the parks you guys visit!

[Markieb]

Excellent pictures! You had a great trip I see!

 

Do you know why there are rocks in the pic " Coming out of the loop"? That looks very odd to me!

[Wood Dragon 1988]

Really enjoying your pictures and your simple but oh so true commentary.

 

Interesting what you said about Euro water rides. I heard a lot of good stuff about them from the Spain tour TRs.

 

I agree about Steel Force. I don't know how people say there is no airtime on it. And as one of you mentioned, it is silky smooth. I almost enjoy the under-restrained Morgan hypers more than I do the B&Ms.

[Groteslurf]

I heard that Fahrenheit did finally open later that day, so maybe you guys should have stayed! Seems like you had a fun day at Knoebel's, though. Can't wait to see the rest of the parks you guys visit!

 

Yeah, isn't that a shame

When we left, I couldn't imagine they would still open the ride the same day after what have happened.

Oh well, it was quite interesting to stand there. We actually didn't do any rides that day in Hershey. We have just been standing there for 4 hours. How silly are we ?

Anyway, since I was wearing my TPR t-shirt, I had a lot of people to talk to. What a shirt can do Today, in another shirt, nobody talked to me at Dorney

To all the people I talked to at HP, it was nice meeting you. To the lady I briefly talked to in the elevator of the hotel and who was one of the 11, hope you got yr ride after all. To Anthony of www.hpbuzz.com , lots of success with your new Hersheypark website.

 

Btw, thanks to all readers and their comments. We really appreciate your comments. Otherwise we would not have the energy for putting in all the time it takes to make those reports. So thanks for that.

 

Tomorrow and Tuesday SFGAdv.

[Jim S.]

What did you think of Hydra? I was there today, and I had terrible Hydra rides! Last year, the front row vibrated a little more than I liked, and the back row wasn't too bad. This year, the front had full-on intolerable head-banging, and the back was only slightly better. I don't know if I was on the same train for each ride, but I decided not to take anymore rides to find out because I didn't want to be in pain the rest of the day. I wonder if I should have tried the middle of the train.

 

Even with the trim brake on Thunderhawk, it still hits the final brakes dangerously hard sometimes. If you got a ride where it didn't, you were lucky. I hate to think of what it would be like without it, even though I would rather have the airtime the ride was designed to have. It should have skid brakes instead of fin brakes. Does anyone know if it originally had skid brakes, and why they were changed if so?

 

It was interesting to see the general public's reaction to Voodoo. I think they were afraid to ride it. I've never seen as many people standing outside the queue watching a coaster as were in the queue, I've never seen such a short queue for a new ride, and I've never heard as many people screaming as loud on every train.

[stormrider]

That's kid of like V2 at Discovery Kingdom. I think people are scared of the noise it makes when launching. I realized those weren't screams but were part of the launching mechanism. The ride itself wasn't even scary. But at least it's easy to get multiple rides on.

[yankees15]

^^I realized that too with Voodoo. A TON of people were scared to ride it on Friday night. I believe it is because people from this area have never even seen a launch coaster before.

 

Great trip report so far! I am loving the pictures!

[PKI Jizzman]

Wow, Steel Force looks really good! I totally forgot about that ride being at the park. I love Magnum, so I hope to check that out some day!

 

 

-J "Pain doesn't bother me" Z

[BRTeller]

I heard that Fahrenheit did finally open later that day, so maybe you guys should have stayed! Seems like you had a fun day at Knoebel's, though. Can't wait to see the rest of the parks you guys visit!

 

Yeah, isn't that a shame

When we left, I couldn't imagine they would still open the ride the same day after what have happened.

Oh well, it was quite interesting to stand there. We actually didn't do any rides that day in Hershey. We have just been standing there for 4 hours. How silly are we ?

Anyway, since I was wearing my TPR t-shirt, I had a lot of people to talk to. What a shirt can do Today, in another shirt, nobody talked to me at Dorney

To all the people I talked to at HP, it was nice meeting you. To the lady I briefly talked to in the elevator of the hotel and who was one of the 11, hope you got yr ride after all. To Anthony of www.hpbuzz.com , lots of success with your new Hersheypark website.

 

Btw, thanks to all readers and their comments. We really appreciate your comments. Otherwise we would not have the energy for putting in all the time it takes to make those reports. So thanks for that.

 

Tomorrow and Tuesday SFGAdv.

 

I was standing right with you guys in line. My mom asked you if you were the main guy of TPR, lol. I explained to her later who was.

[Groteslurf]

5/26 : Six Flags Great Adventure

 

Wow, this park has some good coasters ! For me, this park has set new standards.

El Toro blew me away. Nitro is silky smooth thus good, Medusa is the best floorless I've been on now, Superman is the best flying coasters I know so far, Kingda Ka is the highest and fastest and I like it, though I prefer Dragster.

Dark Knight is, euh ...., better than not covered ? We heard several GP saying "Was that it ?" and "Did we wait 2 hours for that ?".

Luckily we listened to R&E and got FP Gold

 

So SFGAdv impressed me with their coasters, but they didn't impress me at all with their operations.

Batman was running with 2 trains but the ops never managed to get the train ready before the other one returned.

Medusa : same

El Toro : same

Rolling Thunder : same (on each side)

Nitro was running 3 trains but there was always 1 train which had to wait for a while before entering the station. One time all 3 where at the station. And this with a clamshell only train

Superman was running only 1 train while the normal line was more than 1 hour. After 9 pm we saw that they finally were running 2 trains.

Gasm : same as with Nitro.

KK : 3 trains but it took us nearly 1 hour wait (incl 10 minute breakdown) to get on frontseat with 12 people in front of us. So that means we were on the 7th train. 7 trains times 3 loadstations, that about 21 trains in 50 minutes !!

 

Although I like the coasters, it was really one of the worst ride operations I ever saw.

Nitro : what a very smooth ride. It was just like sitting in my sofa watching a TPR dvd

The ride is awesome though.

Superman row. "I don't care if people have to wait, I'm only running 1 train and I will make sure we'll take our time to un- and reload the train so that there is only one train dispatched every 4 minutes".

Didn't like these

Some moro El Toro

Medusa, another great, smooth ride.

Wow, just wow !

There is a train on the track though you hardly see it. I love the way you can walk around Dragster. SFGA could have done better with KK. Now you can only take pics from a distance.

KK : it is high and fast. But noticed some shaking going one.

GASM : I'm not a fan of those Arrow loopers, so didn't like this one either. It is a beauty though. That first loop is so weird.

In person.

Dark Knight preshow.

Batman : great ride but not the best B&M inverted.

Entrance

[hansrubens]

Sixflags Great Adventure, may 26-27

But i'll guess you all already knew that.

It's the tallest and fastest coaster on the planet.

Kingda Ka was great but operations were bad. This train took about 10 minutes to dispatch.

I'll guess I'm just too tall.

Those coasters are too painfull to me.

1st loop with train.

That coaster looks so great.

The Great American Scream Machine. Another Arrow multilooper.

But Bugs didn't like that.

We chased down Bugs.

Daffy looks so goofy

We ran into some Characters too.

But I liked Talon much better.

It was quite forcefull.

Batman the ride.

I didn't had any expectations. The cars look cool though but it's just a wild mouse.

This was a coaster that did disappoint.

Train rolling in.

Bunnyhops.

Awesome moments of airtime. The trims weren't on at least I didn't feel them.

You can hardly see the train through all the supports.

And it didn't disappoint.

I was looking forward to this coaster.

It was our first real kiddiecoaster credit of the trip.

First stop was Blackbeard. No Flash Pass required though

Great system. Now we could do all the coasters on one day.

That 110 dollar was well spend. The park was packed. We only used it on the first day on the second day there were only a few schooltrips.

First off to get our Flash Pass gold. Look at that line.

We have arrived.

Lifthill shot through a window. Isn't this a kind of art?

Some coaster got stuck on this element.

Medusa Signature shot.

This is what the inside looked like. It smells like paint.

Paintball shooting.

Thats enough

Some Arrow goodness.

Well this baby runs like steel coaster.

I think it's even better than the Expedition Geforce. Although you can't compare wood with steel.

This is my new #1 coaster.

Isn't this coaster too dangerous for the American people. It needs to be trimmed.

Wow what an airtime.

Thumbs up for El Toro

This part of the park was nicely themed.

Those signs got me so confused.

Nightview.

OMG two train shot.

It was much better than Vekoma's flying coaster.

This part of the Pretzel loop was very forcefull.

Superman was my first B&M flying. Not my favorite type of coaster but I enjoyed it.

I liked Dragster better though. There was nothing that this "airtime hill" could do about.

[hansrubens]

On the second day at Great adventure I only took a few overview pictures from the skyride.

Overview #9

Overview #8

Overview #7

Overview #6

Overview #5

Overview #4

Overview #3

Overview #2

Overview #1

See here we go.

[hansrubens]

Excellent pictures! You had a great trip I see!

 

Do you know why there are rocks in the pic " Coming out of the loop"? That looks very odd to me!

 

I didn't know that there were no rocks before. So I didn't pay attention to them. Did we got the premier.

[hansrubens]

May 28th Kings Dominion

Hardly any pain.

and it worked out very well.

This time I tried the frontseat

Aquatrax.

Arrow multilooper

Anaconda.

Bob

It goes very slowly through these elements.

It was real good fun but I expected something more.

The ride itself was kind of a disappointment.

Volcano. This coaster looks great.

The park was dead. This were the only people in the park.

Kings Dominion. This park is exactly the same as Kings Island... well almost.

It was very bumpy and rough.

The Rebel Yell was only running the right side.

Only this one was very painfull.

Shockwave. A Togo standup coaster the one in Canadas Wonderland was good so I was looking forward to this.

Backlot stunt coaster. This time all of the effects worked... except for the chopper.

Last but not least overview picture of Dominator

and even fire. Wow.

water,

There was fog

Themed topspin

Dora

Beginning of the ride.

Cool huh?

The Mansion

Shooting game.

Scoob.

And some twisty track at the end.

Corkscrew.

Cobraroll

You can almost touch the train here.

The Dominator was great.

Anaconda

Hurler

Grizly

Rebel Yell

and hard to forget.

It was hard to find.

The Grizly was quite different.

It was the best wooden coaster in the park.

This coaster had some good spots.

The Hurler

[FeelTheFORCE]

Awesome GADV pics! I'll be there in about a week! Can't wait!

[ElToroExtreme]

@ GAdv

 

Im sooooooooooooo suprised that their operations were so bad! This year has been amasing with the park ops! Not as you describe tho! Hopefully they will shape up for Saturday!