silver2005

Hershey and Knoebels flood all the time and their wooden coasters in those areas prone to flooding are still doing good.

@TombRaiderFTW That feels like a very Dan Snyder move when he was at SIX to essentially patent/trademark everything.

You also have to take into account what Paramount/Viacom was trying to do with the parks, they were trying to make them more like Universal Studios parks. I think all 5 would have lost that more traditional seasonal park feeling and turned into directionless monstrosities. I'm glad Paramount left. Paramount couldn't have saved SOB if they tried. From what I know (I can't pull up sources since they're all archived into the ethers of the internet), everyone approached to fix SOB turned it down. Kinzel and his ego were so desperate to get it back they chose to do it in-house. I'm surprised Gerstlauer even approved the use of their trains on it.

There are easily climbable fences around old SOB queue that are low to the ground and near the service road that goes towards the batwing.

^The parks you listed do a LOT of things better than KI. Sub $200 is a steal for a DW season pass.

Another fear of getting a new coaster in the current park climate, especially with the merger upcoming, is it might mask the faults of the park and they could use that distraction to further undercut other things.

^Them being thorough about loose articles sounds like proper training, not the ride crew not telling them anything. I fail to understand the problem with a ride op trying to be more thorough about guest safety.

People can still use pockets to get things loose articles such as glasses into line, then wear them while boarding, which, ops should be rechecking for that if that's the case. Its not like they do on Kingda Ka or other SIX rides where they even check your pockets. I've had to be reminded by the line separators before about sunglasses on the rides that check at the queue entrance and I immediately obliged.

^You know that Banshee ops check for loose articles at the beginning of the queue just like Mystic Timbers and Orion, right? Sounds like they're just doing their job.

July 14, 2004: Coaster shut down after debris hits riders (beaconjournal.com)

I did a bit of eyeballing certain water coasters in that space, and while you can't exactly do anything on the scale of Wildebeest at HW, you could do a smaller one like HP's. You can always go above the path in sections for one in that spot as well. silver2005, having wishful thinking.

I know you don't exactly need a lot of room for water park additions, but with the proximity to the power lines, I suspect its nothing too big. I say that because I want SC to get a water coaster at some point, and the I don't think the area in question would fit one.

Of course not, but I just see a lot of similarities to past failures with record breaking rides that got too ambitious and to that of how X basically ruined Arrow. I've seen this story before.

I have major concerns about this. First, I hope they have a 700 ft crane to help the train over the biggest hill if it were ever to stall and it has no way of saving itself. Overheating is also a concern being it's in a desert, hitting those speeds, and the wear it has on the LSM's. The spoked road wheels may help, but the upstop and side wheels aren't spoked. Also, how would you like to get stuck on the block on top of the cliff for long periods? I imagine there will be a service road to get up there. I also hope the maintenance crew likes walking nearly 3 miles of track in those conditions. I mean, I hope it does well, but good googly moogly does this have a lot of things that can go wrong.

As someone utterly fascinated by amusement park history, the specific history of all the coasters that have crossed the 100 mph mark comes to mind. All of them have had major issues getting open and/or staying open. Superman: The Escape and Tower of Terror had major power issues due to LSM's beings so new and the weight of the cars, I read Superman required its own line off the California power grid which was mind boggling at the time. For the S&S attempts- I'm not privy to Dodonpa but I'm sure it had issues given how Hypersonic went and has been dismantled, and Ring Racer was blowing air compression tanks. TTD and Kingda Ka- cable snaps, overheating wheels, the TTD incident which led to TT2 Formula Rossa launches straight into trims because even with its giant layout, the curves are still too tight for the necessary G force requirements to riders, also requires goggles to ride due to sand particles flying into your face at 150 mph I'm really, really skeptical about Falcon's Flight. I think it has the potential to be to Intamin what X was to Arrow. I don't think the industry has really got a lock on how to do coasters over 100 mph.

It's hard to see in those photos, but some other parts around the staging area suggest gunpowder black supports so far (could be wrong, but nothing else to go by currently). I was initially guessing they'd go for Volcano's color scheme to pay homage to it and use a volcano theme again with how beloved that ride was. Now I'm imagining they still had the volcano structure and then have a wing coaster do a bunch of the near miss inversions through it.

Well, while it didn't come in 2021, one is coming for 2025. I like the track color. Courtesy of Kings Dominion Fanatics via Facebook

You mean 3? Bat, Iron Dragon, Vortex 4 if you count Ninja after the merger goes through.

Sky Rocket at Kennywood is mildly better than Backlot and FoF, though not by much, but I did find Tempesto decently comfy. Almost nothing was worse than the initial OTSR's on Flight of Fear.

My idea of a Congo Falls replacement would be a Mack water coaster, though, my imagined version would also remove Timberwolf so it could have enough area to do 2 splashes.

Apologies if this goes off on non-HBL tangents. I remember being creeped all the way out by the animatronic of Gargamel on Enchanted Voyage. I vaguely remember Sunshine Turnpike, the slide, and the playgrounds. I wasn't a fan of coasters on my earlier visits in the 90s (born in 86), and one thing I attribute to that is the tunnel on Beastie (wasn't a fan of AE or Beast for that reason early on as well). I totally get why they removed it- I think I would have warmed up to coasters faster if it didn't have the tunnel back in the day. I think I remember a Jabberjaw (the HB shark) fountain near the blue ice cream as well. I would say before I started to like the coasters, my favorite rides were both flumes, WWC, the original Tiques (my family mostly rode from the Rivertown side for some reason), and KIMVRR. Also, footlong Skyline coneys where Mystic Timbers is currently. I really miss the original ivy tunnel as well, it served as a nice area separator between RT and HBL. I remember the original wood carving shop used to be by the smaller flume. The Coca-Cola Cool Zone in The Beast queue was also nice in the summer. Strangely, I was only indifferent to Racer (pre-last drop removal), and it was Top Gun that got me interested (I think it had to do with it being so quiet compared to the rest of KI's line up at the time plus the theming was awesome early in its life). The single moment that got me hooked for the KI coasters was riding Vortex and my first Beast night ride back-to-back on a P&G buyout day (I think it was 94 or 95). There's one thing that I have a hard time remembering about Adventure Village that I think I get wrong. Before the water tower in Action Zone, wasn't there a body of water of some sort in that spot across from the old shop that you went through when exiting King Cobra? Does anyone here have any pictures that spot in Adventure Village before the Action Zone re-theme? Speaking of Action Zone- bring back the Skyflyer lighting package.

You know, with CF working with Vekoma again, Vekoma did create trains for an Arrow suspended coaster in England- Vampire at Chessington World of Adventures. Maybe they could do it for Bat to give it some more life if it comes to that?

Waldameer has been chipping away at Ravine Flyer II recently, could be for that. Twister at Knoebels has also started receiving track work recently.

Yeah, a drop floor seems rather inefficient compared to a few swinging gates. I'm always thinking of these things as something needless that can go wrong and cause downtime.

Just saw POVs of this and Good Gravy, and I feel having a drop floor is a bit overkill for a kids Boomerang coaster.