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Vortex 25th Anniversary


mccarthysnerd
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I remembering being very young , 7 years old maybe and seeing Vortex and being scared out of my mind. It was closed that day because I remember my family not being able to ride it, but i remember telling myself, "there is no way i would ever get on that" lol . My family has been taking me to Kings Island since I was 3 years old but I really don't have any memories until i was about 7 years old of the park. Probably because that is the year I rode my first big coaster. The Racer! :)

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Maybe they will re-make the sign above the entrance on Vortex for it's 25th anniversary (with some new 25th ann. trains)

Have a good 25 more years Vortex!

I don't know how likely it'd be for next year, but I'm all for Vortex getting the new looper trains from Vekoma like what went on Carolina Cobra at Carowinds. Sidewinder at Hersheypark has them, which I've ridden. The ride was still pretty brutal (who knew the top of a simple loop could be so headbangy?!) but the trains helped a lot, as there wasn't anything near your head/neck to hit. I don't find Vortex to be unbearably headbangy, even if you sit in its worst rows, but the comfort level would come up significantly with the Vekoma trains, especially in those turns before the loops and before the MCBR.

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That was the year I graduated (2nd best summer ever!) I remember all the hype being not only about the six inversions, but the height of the lift hill (don't have it memorized, but something in excess of 120 feet, which was a 'wow' back then). I was on my way to Air Force basic training, and stayed at the then-Holiday Inn across I-75 from Downtown Cincnnati, and was on the 12th floor, looking out a window, and I told some dude standing there something like, "Man, if that new Vortex is over 120 feet tall, this is about how high the first drop is supposed to be!"

Didn't ride it until years later. I never go without my 3-ride-per-trip quota ever since. Happy Birthday, O Steel One! ^_^

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^^

Vortex is 148 feet tall, with a 138-foot drop, a maximum speed of 55mph, and six inversions over a 2:30 ride...according to Roller Coaster Database.

http://www.rcdb.com/71.htm

Ahh, Vortex...my 3rd favorite ride at Kings Island, after Beast and Diamondback. First rode it in 2009, long after it first opened, and didn't like it all that much because I idiotically sat in the back row of a car (aka all cramped up). When I returned in 2010, I tried it in a front-row (of a car) seat and liked it a good bit more. Then, later that day, I tried 5-1 and Vortex passed Flight of Fear on my "favorite KI rides" list. Happy 25th birthday, Vortex...(to be specific, the ride's 25th is on 4-11, also according to RCDB)

PS: If I remember correctly, Vortex was actually, for a brief peroid, the tallest looping roller coaster in the world when it opened. It was also the tallest roller coaster at Kings Island for 13 years, until a certain now-SBNO wooden hypercoaster showed up in 2000...

PS #2: 1600 riders per hour...wow. No wonder the line moves so fast! (Just saw this on RCDB)...oh wait, that's probably just a claim...but for Vortex, that seems at least SOMEWHAT accurate if Diamondback is 1600 rph...

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Yes! That was it: 148' (Thanks, McSalsa)... Now I remember: I told the dude that the ride was taller than where we were standing. That made it even more exciting.

^^ I, too, have long legs, and I think I remember being able to stretch out in the front cars. Then, I think in like 2007, the front cars seemed cramped, like some kind of wall was installed in the front cars...?

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PS #2: 1600 riders per hour...wow. No wonder the line moves so fast! (Just saw this on RCDB)...oh wait, that's probably just a claim...but for Vortex, that seems at least SOMEWHAT accurate if Diamondback is 1600 rph...

And they claim Beast has 1200 riders per hour... it's impossible to get that many people in one hour with the current braking system.

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I was 7 as well when that thing opened (probably 6, but turned 7 that summer). It would be another 8 years before I had the courage to ride it.

I had this fear that if I went on a looping roller coaster I was instantly going to puke over everything and everyone in the general vicinity as soon as I went upside-down. There was just this mental stigma about it. I don't know where it came from (probably from my older brother who loved to trick me, like when he told me that there was a Tool Christmas album and I searched every record shop for it to no avail). It's funny, I never thought about the fact that I didn't see hundreds of people around Kings Island covered in puke, so I should have realized early that I was going about my thinking the wrong way as far as looping coasters were concerned.

Anyway, once I rode it, I figured I could ride anything and have been riding everything ever since.

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I was 14 when Vortex first opened. I of course rode it that year. I had too... it was the first coaster to go upside down 6 times!

One of my favorite t-shirts was my Vortex shirt, which had the old triangle logo with the metal hand holding the twisted track. I wore that shirt the last day of my sophomore year in high school (1989). I was walking down the stairwell and some idiot came running down the stairs with a black permanent marker in his hand and purposely drew a line across the back of my shirt as he was running by me. He got several other people on his way past them too. I didn't know who he was, and he got away before we were able to catch up with him. That was lucky for him, because he would have received a beat down from all of us if we had caught him.

I went home and threw it in the washer right away, but no amount of washing would get that marker out.

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I'm a really big fan of Vortex. And since I'm absolutely frightened of WindSeeker, (and the fact that everybody else in my family loves it,) I rode it a lot more than usual this past season.

Every time I've ridden Vortex, I've always checked and double checked that I was in 5-1. Is there really that much of a difference? Being tall and quite skinny, I'm a bit too afraid to try it out for myself, and I'm worried one of these days I'll be forced to go to a different seat and I'll be so battered by the end I'll be sore for days.

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^Doubt it, probably just do beast and Diamondback again. I would like it though. And didn't at one point last year KI say that Vortex and WindSeeker would have ERT? My first ride on Virtex was in 2007 or 2008. When I first turned 48 inches, I decided maybe not to get on beast or Vortex until next time. My favorite I ride that day was Top Gun (Flight Deck). Rode it like 5 times in a row with my friend, that was my favorite ride do far. Trying not to turn this into a flight deck topic, let's wait for next year, we can do happy 20th flight deck.

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