silver2005

^I've raised that question as well. The big thing I see is that the gap between family friendly coasters and the huge thrill rides is starting to widen a great deal. However, I see a few contenders. Mack has a train design which is family friendly but isn't afraid to do inversions. Those also only have a height requirement of 1.3 meters (4.2 ft) which could easily fill in for an Arrow or Schwarzkopf. Gerstlauer has made trains for Sooperdooperlooper at Hersheypark, which they could probably design something to use those trains themselves. They certainly aren't afraid of inversions seeing they have a coaster which holds the inversion record. Zeirer and Zamperla are kind of unknowns to me. Premier probably could if they made something with a launch that isn't too intense. B&M is starting to delve into family coasters now. They also have trains for Steel Dragon 2000 with a height requirement of only 122 cm (4 ft). They might be able to pull that off. You could bring RMC into the equation as well. Either the Topper Track or the Iron Horse would be ideal and I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard to ask them to tone down the intensity a tad. As of right now, I wouldn't trust Intamin with building a merry-go-round as they are seemingly finding ways to screw up rides (Shoot the Rapids for instance, how do you screw up a log flume?!) Vekoma has kind of fallen of the face of the Earth. I haven't seen any new rides from them in quite a while aside from a few of their new family Boomerangs popping up. They're supposed to have new train designs as seen on their Battlestar Galactica ride (which is now SBNO). Their other standard looping models are pretty rough from what I hear. S&S would probably be a no-go, mainly because other than a sub-par capacity El Loco model, their rides are are all super intense launchers or 4D coasters (I'm surprised they didn't pick up on Arrow's other designs).

Silver Dollar City would like to disagree.

Two things to add to the thread. First, I need some people familiar with The Beach to advise me on how long it would take to get through all the attractions there in a single visit or anything else I should do while I'm there. I'm planning on going towards the end of June. Second, I'll be back at Coney Island on the 3rd with the UC Jazz Band for the Balloon Glow.

Trip report from 6/3/14 The day started a little slow for me. I woke up feeling a little weary, so I took a few meds to help me out and I mostly felt okay through the day. Arrived too late for ERT, thus I decided to skip Banshee in the morning as I had my Soak City clothes with me. I managed to ride Racer, Vortex, Beast and Woodstock Express before Soak City opened. Diamondback was down the first few hours with trains stuck on the lift and the mid course brakes. Met up with malem en route. We pretty much did everything in the water park minus the kids areas, but including the Pipeline Paradise body surfing ride. Crowds were pretty light in the water park. Aside from 5 minute waits for Mondo Monsoon (the Tornado) and Zoom Flume (the multi-person raft), sildes were walk on. Waits for the whole park didn't exceed 30 minutes, at least for the rides we went on (didn't do Delirium or Firehawk due to personal preferences). We got to a large amount of the rides in the park throughout the day. Managed to squeeze in a viewing of the Cirque Imagine show around dinner. I really liked it. It had a bit of an abstract aura to it and at a few points it kind of seemed like the performers were ad libbing (making a few things up) in their routines, at least early in the show. Felt like it had a certain bit of sophistication to it, but I can't exactly pinpoint why that is. Its refreshing to see something like that at a seasonal chain amusement park. Stayed until closing where we got a few Banshee night rides in before close. It only had a 5 minute wait or even walk on waits that night. The crew was really working fast. I figured they'd take it down a little bit with the lack of line. They need to turn down the volume of the speakers and talk slower as I had a hard time understanding what they were saying. On the other hand, Diamondback was stacking really bad. I'm not normally one to complain about stacking, and if it were about spending more time checking restraints, I wouldn't mind. But half the time they were standing around doing nothing. The seat belts or bins weren't the reasons. They could have dispatched trains much faster than what they were, but for some reason, they were holding back. I don't understand it. Diamondback actually had the longest wait for that, and it could have been half or a third of what they were doing if they were dispatching in timely intervals. Ugh. Oh, and during our dusk ride, we heard there was a fight in the station which held things up a bit. Kind of odd. I do admit, I pushed myself a bit much towards the end of the day. 3 in a row on Banshee really got to me with all that balls-to-the-wall intensity. But in the end, I had a fun day.

So I slightly overtaxed myself today. It was warmer than I expected and might have pushed myself a little too hard. Had fun no matter how you slice it though. Will post a TR tomorrow.

Harsh much? You're allowed to feel sympathy for the victims while also wondering when the ride will open. Wondering about one doesn't negate the other.

The rumor is it will be the next coaster up for a RMC re-tracking.

Does Kings Island have spare motors at the park or do they have to call up Premier and order one?

Do we even know RMC is actually refurbishing Twisted Twins? I haven't heard or read anything about it. I would honestly expect them to have Gravity Group do that before RMC, seeing that the former Gravity Group team, once known as Custom Coasters International, designed it. This is a ride I would love to see a set of Timberliners on, which have worked on smaller wooden coasters not unlike Twisted Twins.

Love that storm shot of Banshee. Now someone get a storm photo with the station.

Six Flags considers Goliath wood. http://content.sixflags.com/comingin2014/greatamerica/goliath/ I consider it wood as well. The Topper Track system uses a similar system to wood coasters, only replacing the top two wood layers with steel. Wood still has an affect on the ride experience. The ride's structure doesn't play a factor into the type it is. For example, Gemini has a wood structure, but it a steel coaster due to the actual track being steel. Voyage is a wood coaster despite having a steel structure. Here is Goliath's track. Yeah, I see a few layers of wood there.

On a similar note, I believe The Beast was marketed at 70 mph.

You must have missed this one then. Photo courtesy of RCDB. Also, whenever someone has brought up Intamin's reliability record, I have yet to hear someone try to defend them for it. Just sayin'.

I prefer wooden coasters to steel coasters any day of the week.

Well, for all you Intamin fans, why can't you have a thrilling and reliable ride from them? Is that too hard to ask from them? If you want any indication of how they're viewed, look at how their American projects have waned, almost exponentially over the last 5 years. Look how long its taken them to fix our very own Drop Tower. I've said this many times, but if you really want something from Intamin, Mack has a lot of the same things and they have a better track record when it comes to reliability.

If you're up to riding them, Firehawk, Flight of Fear and Invertigo are wise choices to ride early.

I am with most of you guys in that I won't wait more than an hour for a given ride. The new ride on opening day is alright just within the context of the moment, but that's it. There are a few rides I'll willingly gather up the patience and wait slightly longer for- those being Beast at night, Diamondback, Millennium Force, Magnum, TTD, and Maverick.

I've always imagined it to be a cross between a brown bear and a wolverine. If anyone has seen the Bearcat statue at UC, something like that.

3 hours and 20 minutes for Banshee on opening day.

Sorry, but I have to.

Just a bit curious on the restraints on Lightning Run, are the leg restraints any concern? In theory (coming from someone who hasn't ridden it), that strong of air with leg restraints seems like a bad combination.

Looks like I'll be headed back the first week they're open 10-10, probably that Tuesday. I'm looking to go to Soak City for a while too, enough to get the achievement of doing all the attractions in the same day. Will be going early for Banshee ERT of course. Might be eating breakfast near Mason/Kings Mills as well. EDIT: Looks like I'll be going June 3rd.

I enjoyed Bond and Days of Thunder a lot for how the park promoted them at the park with movie props from each respective movie(s) around the queue. The pre-ride video for Bond was cool seeing they got Judi Dench (M) and Desmond Llewelyn (Q) to play their parts for a bit of authenticity. 7th Portal was just cool to look at, it looked really great on the projector and just the animation style. Smash Factory was just pure fun. Those were the only films I saw there.

The only thing that comes to mind is this.

That's not to mention Kentucky Kingdom is about twice as far as Kings Island is from NKY (assuming he's talking about the Newport/Covington-ish area).