Carowinds Discussion Thread

-Intimidator still probably my least favorite B&M hyper, but still a good ride. The one thing that was really annoying was half the day the crew would do the whole "do not pull down your lapbars, we will do it for you" and the rest of the day they did not.

It's a fairly new thing this year. I didn't notice it until mid-summer or so. It's possible some of the ops aren't used to it. I was told by a ride op that it was to make it easier on them to access the seatbelt for checking.

Nice pics above.

Those photos are amazing! Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, these photos are not doing a great job of making me ANY less excited to get back to Carowinds this weekend for the first time in two and a half years. Great shots, especially that rainbow pic! Amazing.

The forecast is looking a little rainy this weekend, scattered showers throughout the two days we'll be there. How are they on closures down there? We're staying at the Comfort Inn right next door so I mean, worst case scenario, we can always hide out in our room for a while and come back to the park if they open up again later on... just wanna make sure they don't pull a Six Flags Great Adventure on us and close at 3 if there's rain going on earlier in the day.

Cedar Fair doesn't like to close their parks. It'll be open unless it's pretty bad.

Thanks for the reports, both of you seemed to have an awesome day at the park. And those photos!

Anyone got news on Copperhead Strike? Heard there was injury and it's been down since Sunday.

Anyone got news on Copperhead Strike? Heard there was injury and it's been down since Sunday.

From local news website:

Carowinds released the following statement:

“On Sunday evening, a guest had a thumb injury on the Copperhead Strike roller coaster. Park officials immediately responded and the guest was transported for medical care. Out of precaution, the ride is currently closed while we conduct an assessment. The safety of our guests is our top priority.”

Can't say I've seen many "thumb" injuries from roller coasters. Curious to see more details emerge.

Seems the front part of the train (the fiberglass(?) car part) came off and hit her on the thumb.

^That almost makes sense. People online are trying to figure out how a 'thumb' injury closes the ride for multiple days. But if a part of the train flew off that isn't supposed to, then that makes sense of why it's still closed.

Newer information is making the issue more cloudy. A screenshot of a post of the victim on Facebook implies there was a malfunction on her seat (using her wording). Also, it doesn't appear the thumb was detached, as the post was a few hours after the incident and shows the victim in a bandage; if she had lost her thumb, recovery time would have been much longer.

But, if there was a malfunction, then I can understand the extended closure. Also possible that South Carolina requires rides to remain closed until they can complete an investigation, which may take a few days to get someone to the park and do their job.

Have any other Macks with the same train design closed since the incident like Manta or the ones in Europe?

They put a new piece behind the headrest and got CS back up and running this afternoon. Good news.

Glad they got it open again. Do you happen to have a picture of the new headrest piece?

I don't have one myself. I saw one or two pics on FB. It's a metal piece that covers about half the headrest on the back side. It appears the accident might have happened while getting in and out from the looks of the piece. Maybe she got a big slash or something while grabbing hold to enter or exit. That is complete speculation there and just a guess.

^That's funny you say that. Over the weekend, every time I got out of the Copperhead Strike train, I thought that there should be some sort of handle bar to pull yourself up from. I also thought there should be a covering to the restraint mechanism because it looks like it could chew a finger up if they got too close.

^^^ awesome photos [emoji41]

Was very happy to see that Copperhead Strike was back up and running in quick order over the weekend. It ended up being my son's 200th coaster, and his brand new favorite coaster of all time, dethroning Twisted Timbers. (Yes, he rode Fury. Yes, he still ranked CS higher. I'm not gonna argue with his subjective logic!)

Hair-raisingly fun!

I might write up a whole trip report at some point in the future, but suffice it to say, it was a great weekend down in Virginia and the Carolinas. Even though the rain never really let up on Saturday, we made up for it by spending the majority of the day at a nearby Great Wolf Lodge and splashing the day away, then getting some hibachi Japanese for dinner. Sunday, the weather was perfect, and we managed to hit every single thing in the park, most multiple times. Shout out to the Fury 325 crew that was cranking out trains all day long and let us have a three-ride re-ride at the end of the night.

Last thing to note: the Mountain Gliders? LEGIT. Easiest snapping I've had at any park not located in the woody hills of Elysburg, PA. My son was getting huge swings by himself, and my daughter and I managed to get some massive bounces out of it. I didn't get a chance to do them on my first trip down there, but we're gonna make a point to hit them every time we visit from now on, and strongly urge all y'all to do the same.

Here's some more shots of Fury 325 from my trip two weeks ago

Great photos! Looking forward to the future of this park. They have really up'ed the thrill factor in the last few years. I think this park could really benefit from a great woodie or RMC. It also would be great to see a few more stand out flats.

Stunning pictures. I stole #3 for my laptop background picture.

Those are amazing pictures! #4 and #5 make for great Home and Lock Screen pictures! Thanks for sharing!

Well thank ya! That's awesome that you guys are using them for your wallpapers

Had good time this weekend at Carowinds. It was blazing hot but we've gotten used to that at this point.

Got an hour of ERT after closing on Fury. We'd stop in the station for 15-20 seconds to reset restraints and swap seats if anyone wanted to move around. Then you'd roll to the bottom of the lift and wait for the train in front to cross the mcb. Had a blast. Got to marathon a bit this morning before leaving town as well. Even at noon there were no lines and we were able to sit on Fury and Intimidator as long as we wanted.

Lots of Scarowinds stuff all around. I've never done any Halloween events at a park so we enjoyed seeing all the props and scenes. Made me want to return, but I think we are doing Kings Island instead since we just visited this weekend for the event.