Photo TR: Josh and Kyle's Southern Spree-Day One Carowinds!

britishdebutante · July 17, 2010

It sucks when you live hours away from your closest friends – it especially makes planning roller coaster trips a lot harder. Josh and I had never been to Carowinds due to the fact that its kind of a far trip from Cleveland and their coaster collection has always seemed rather mediocre. We used the addition of Intimidator as an excuse to visit the park and pick up a bunch of new credits. Josh decided to fly into Charlotte from Cleveland and I left for the 7 hour drive from Nashville at midnight (central time). I made great time getting into Charlotte (only 6 hours!) and managed to sneak in a nap while waiting for Josh’s flight. We had planned to get to the park at just around opening but Josh had absentmindedly booked his flight with a PM departure instead of an AM departure. Luckily US Airways had one (!!!) seat left on a 8:55 am flight out of Cleveland. I ended up having to wait longer for him and we didn’t get to the park until around 11:15, but everything worked itself out.

The first ride we approached was Nighthawk, which had about an hour wait. We mistakenly took this as a bad sign of how lines were going to be for the rest of the day. However, elsewhere in the park, all rides were walk-ons. The ride experienced some “technical difficulties”, but opened up after about ten minutes. We boarded the train and sat down in the sweat-soaked seats. Disgusting and slimy! The ride was very reminiscent of X-hawk, though it seemed to possess a more severe rattle.

We took the back corner of the park by storm and rode all of the attractions, including Drop Tower, in about 45 minutes. Hurler was probably the slowest wooden coaster I have EVER been on. That first turn after the drop really seems to slow the ride down, providing absolutely no airtime for the rest of the ride. It was a completely unenjoyable experience. Ricochet was a standard wild mouse, with an inappropriate coastal theme. The best part of that coaster was that we had the opportunity to run into Justin Bieber while queuing! OMG! Carolina Cyclone turned 30 this year and there are signs nearby commemorating the event. The ride itself is pretty smooth during its second half. The paintjob, however, is awful! It looks like it was painted by a 10 year old playing RCT. Having ridden Iron Wolf two years back, we expected Vortex to be an unpleasant experience. We were surprised to find that it’s very smooth – in the front seat at least. It was probably one of the most enjoyable standups I have ever experienced, up there with Chang and Scorcher. We were excited to try out the newer trains on our relocated coaster, Carolina Cobra. The ride itself is still boring, but the trains make it much more bearable. The transitions still rattle the head, but the lack of actual headbanging is a big plus.

We grabbed lunch at the Country Kitchen cafeteria-style restaurant. The turkey and two side dishes came out to be about 10 bucks. Josh was about to spend 4 bucks on bottled water, but the cashier said, “Hey, I’ll give you a free water!” and handed us both LARGE size cups of water. It was pretty sweet but I’m not sure he’s allowed to do that! We allowed our food to settle with a ride on Boo Blasters on Boo Hill. I’ve ridden Scooby Doo at Kings Dominion and Kings Island and, in my opinion, the ride loses nothing with the loss of the Scooby characters. It’s still just as interactive and there are actually a couple of scary effects; I jumped when a ghost popped out from around the corner!

Afterburn totally surprised us with its intensity. That loop is huge and the G’s between it and the immelman are grey-out forceful (in the back), something I have never experience on an inverted before. It was definitely the best coaster of the day! I’ve been on rough wooden coasters before, but Thunder Road was rough in a different way – the shuffling was unbearable on the return run! I’ve never felt a ride shuffle up and down on the track like that before. It was pretty enjoyable on the way out, with great airtime on the smaller hills.

We took a spin on the kiddie coasters and were actually able to solicit some kids to ride Lucy’s Crabby Cabby with us. It was nice to get that extra credit since Goldrusher was down all day. If you have long legs and jeans on, be prepared to get rust stains on them from the lap bars on Woodstock Express’ trains.

The park was so dead that Intimidator had only a 3 train wait for the front seat. Is this normal for Carowinds to be this dead? If so, how do they deserve a B&M hyper?? The ride starts off pretty good with a great first drop and a really cool turn on the second hill. What sucks is that the ride is pretty much killed by the trims on the hill right after the turn around. It literally crawls over the rest of the hills and meanders through the turn after the midcourse – a serious disappointment! I know B&M hypers aren’t generally the most intense rides, but come on! It was so slow! We rode both in the front and back seats, with the back being better during the first half of the ride and no difference on the sluggish second half. And this ride is themed to a racecar driver? It was neat when the Intimidator ride-ops announced that on July 4th, Cedar Fair parks with B&M hypers would be having a capacity contest – with shoutouts to Behemoth and Diamondback! Of course, we started chanting “Diamondback! Diamondback! Diamondback!” with no response or participation from the local crowd. The ride-ops enjoyed it, though.

We took a few pictures of our day. The sky was overcast pretty much all day but it was still really hot out. Lighting wasn’t really the best for pictures, but we only had a point and shoot anyways.