silver2005

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).

I wish the smoothie stand by Backlot's helix were open more. I'm a big fan of them on hot days, or at least have some stand that's open all the time sell them. A sea food stand would also be nice. Also, quick question- what food was sold at the International Street restaurant?

Thundernation at Silver Dollar City also drops out of the station and has a lift at the end.

Well, if Big Droppy Thing at NJFTP had delays due to winter weather, I can only imagine it was worse in Gurnee, IL. Also, due to the NTG incident, RMC can't afford to rush things no matter how hard Six Flags wants to push them.

I thought Ouimet had been CEO for a while when WildCat bit the dust...

On Vortex during my most recent visit, I caught the ride op on the mic stating "Oncoming riders, how was your ride?" I'm not even kidding.

WildCat's numerous brake failures near the end of its lifespan might have likely contributed to its removal. It was also 42 years old when it was removed, which is senior-citizen-age for steel coasters.

What I mean is you go up... Then down But you're simplifying things so much. There's more to Kingda Ka and Top Thrill Dragster than what you're implying that make them very different from dropping towers, thus entirely different ride experiences. For example, name me a tower that does this. Photo courtesy of RCDB.

Yeah...towers normally (can't say completely don't because of Falcon's Fury) don't let you see the direction you're ascending or dropping. Seeing the ground rush up at you, whilst spiraling down like TTD and KK do is pretty awesome. I for one also love TTD's build up with the racing lights and engine sounds. Its very, very different from a dropping tower. Also, no tower reaches 100+ mph nor comes close to the acceleration of Dragster of Kingda Ka.

I remember him. Yet another reason I'd agree with Terpy about the ride ops not talking. His enthusiasm is great, and fun when you're ont eh ride heading out. But listening to it for 10 minutes while waiting to get on gets old real quick. I really, really disliked him. On a few Beast night rides I partook in the year he worked there, they would constantly triple stack trains, which on Beast, requires effort even on semi-slow loading. He would also go on and on forever. You could hear him from the lower queue switchbacks, it got really annoying.