TombRaiderFTW

^ It's the sound of the wheels on the fresh paint. Vortex made that same sound when its rails were repainted before the 2009 season.

Vortex, sometime in the mid-90's. Probably 1997, if I had to guess a particular year. I was terrified of it at the time, particularly because it went upside-down. I hated my ride on it. My opinion of it since then has only slightly improved.

^ Just some forum posts here and there from a couple Kennywood ride ops indicating that it was one of the more difficult rides to operate. I'm right there with you on wondering how that would be since it doesn't appear to be anything too complex.

I believe Irvine Ondrey Engineering also recently did a controls revamp on Kennywood's Auto Race, by the by. From what I've read from some Kennywood ride ops online, that ride used to be one of the most difficult rides in the park to operate. I've never ridden Auto Race, so I don't know understand how that ride works. Also, if she loves Magnum... Consider me HIGHLY interested in getting on Lightning Run. It made me very, very happy to finally get back in the first car of Magnum today after at least two years of not riding/riding elsewhere in the train. I forgot how much I love that dang ride.

^ I don't know of any Monster rides at SFOG with half its collection of figures broken. All of Monster Mansion's figures were working just fine in October 2013. That was the first (and only) time I rode it, but there were no motionless figures to be seen during that ride. It's a great ride. Also, I'd consider SFOG a seasonal park if Dollywood gets to be considered seasonal.

Of course, I don't know this for a fact, but I'm pretty sure "the force that it takes to instantly raise the seats back up" is just the deceleration force (plus gravity.) It really wouldn't make sense to have anything moving the seats from the face-down position to upright when you're already going to have all your deceleration forces and gravity already able to cause that motion. The cylinders the others are talking about are likely dampers, which would stabilize the seats quickly and smoothly instead of letting them swing like a swingset as the gondola returns to unload. It's the same idea as the silver dampers that were added to the WindSeekers to keep the seats from swinging too wildly. If what everyone else is saying is right, then it seems like the problem is that the ride is braking too quickly, the seats weigh too much, or they need more dampers/need to redesign the dampers. When dampers slow things down, they slow things proportionally to the momentum (that's mass times velocity) of the thing they're slowing down. If the thing being slowed is moving too quickly/weighs too much for what the damper can handle, you need an emergency stop to avoid damaging the damper. In the case of fluid dampers, you specifically need some way to let off some of the fluid, or else some way to disengage the damper--such as having them release from the seats and smack the tower, for instance. Otherwise, they could explode, which isn't encouraged in most engineering applications, for some odd reason. If I were a betting man, I'd say the stronger brakes are going to start higher on the tower, and the final product will come to a more gradual stop than what we've seen so far. But I could also be entirely wrong.

^ Then you would be the second member. I'd be the first.

That's part of it. Their Crypt is a nice throwback to Paramount-era rides, but it's no replacement for our Tomb Raider: The Ride. It's also very disorienting, so I really don't have much interest in riding it more than three times. That whole area is gorgeous, and it's the most beautifully themed area in any Cedar Fair park I've been to (KI, CP, MA, KD, and Carowinds). Avalanche is very underrated. Volcano deserves all the praise it gets, and maybe a little bit more. If you consider Flight of Fear to be part of the area, and I do, it's a smoother and more enjoyable ride that doesn't come to a full stop on the MCBR. The volcano that Volcano enters and circles will spout fire. It's just a cool area! (At least as of four years ago, it also occasionally was known to play the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider film score throughout the area... Not that that had anything to do with it! ) Aaaaaand now I want to go to KD. Y'know, on top of the strong cravings I've had to revisit that park this year. Thanks a lot, you guys.

I'm kinda jaded, I guess... I've never been that jazzed about Eurofighters. I've ridden Spongebob Squarepants Rock Bottom Plunge at the Mall of America, Mystery Mine, and Dare Devil Dive at Six Flags over Georgia, and none of them were anything to write home about for me. Dare Devil Dive is one of the most uninteresting rides I've ever ridden, and the capacity seems way too small for what SFOG requires. I can't imagine that thing ever not having a full queue. In the same way that Georgia Cyclone uses Rocky Mountain Construction's Topper Track to compliment the ride instead of redesign it, I'd like to see Beast get some work done. Somewhere around here is a topic about making up your own future plans for the park, and I still stand by my post with the idea of very subtly remodeling Beast to introduce more laterals and remove the number of trim brakes. It would do wonders. That's the next coaster I'd like to see at the park. In response to the original post: no, I don't think the way they marketed Diamondback rules out getting a bigger ride in the future. It just meant that Diamondback was the biggest ride in the park's history. I do think that it isn't likely that we will see a bigger ride any time soon, though; coasters seem to come every five or more years with the way Cedar Fair works now. And for me, that's okay. With Banshee, Kings Island's lineup really doesn't have any major holes. I'd rather they put in new family-friendly flats for the next decade, but that's me.

In terms of overall excitement over the course of riding the ride, Banshee--hands down. Son of Beast's lift hill was very intimidating and exciting, but the subsequent drop was somewhat underwhelming, unless you really liked the sensation of speed. The rest of the ride was so bad that it neutralized any continued excitement. Granted, I never rode it with the loop, but that was a whole five seconds of a three-minute ride. I don't think a loop could redeem the painful keister assault that came before and after it. (I truly associate that ride with my relatively high wood coaster roughness tolerance--I love the majority of Boss, Boardwalk Bullet, and the Coney Island Cyclone. Nothing yet has quite matched the roughness of Son of Beast.) I'm still not in love with B&M as a rule of thumb, but Banshee is consistently entertaining from start to finish. The pacing is constant and interesting, even for being B&M's typical largest-to-smallest element lineup. Of the B&M inverts I've been on, I think I like Banshee this much more than Afterburn, which was previously my favorite of the line. I'd say it's probably tied with Dominator at Kings Dominion as my favorite B&M. It's just behind Adventure Express as my favorite coaster in the park.

...Which has several members who have visited both parks. Why not? At least one member here does prefer Kings Dominion, by the by. The layout isn't perfect, but I could spend all day in the Congo/Safari Village area of that park. Not to mention the rest of it.

At least in terms of what they have posted online, Penn State's TPEG seems to do more with manufacturers and parks directly. One of their projects over the 2012-2013 school year involved working on Sky Rocket at Kennywood. They're also responsible for the (as of last weekend, partial) restoration of the headlights on the front of Kennywood's Thunderbolt's trains. Haven't gotten a chance to see them in action yet, so someone really ought to post a video of them if they find one/get the opportunity to film them.

At this point, I'd rather see several more family-friendly flat rides at the park than any new coaster. Coasters are nice, but there's more to a park than coasters.

I don't think it's actually possible for me to forget Camden Park. Still have those moments where I can't believe the braking system on the Haunted House is a ride op. (Not that I necessarily look down on it; it just seemed really unorthodox in today's world.) On the topic of this thread: 1. Beast (by thiiiiis much) 2. Banshee 3. Diamondback (B&M hypers don't do much for me, Raging Bull excepted)

Kennywood's amazing, and you listed just about every reason I love the place. I don't get why more people don't give it the recognition they give places like Holiday World, because there's really nothing like it anywhere else.

This! When I go to the park alone, the people I'm with don't have problems with marathoning Adventure Express till the cows come home.

Not to mention: isn't it kind of an innuendo? Or do I have a dirty mind?

With Cedar Fair's recent trend towards B&M, I think I'd rather see a wing coaster go there than anything else out of B&M's repertoire. I'm neither amazed nor bored with the wing coasters I have ridden (Gatekeeper, X-Flight, Wild Eagle), but it seems like the best fit when you consider what all the park currently has. Like, I doubt they would go for a dive coaster with Griffon down the road. I really don't know that a flying coaster would have the capacity that Kings Dominion would require, and everything else that B&M produces either already exists or has a fairly similar counterpart at the park. A GCI wouldn't be bad, but I don't know that they'd have a good enough capacity for the park, either. The Cedar Fair parks that have received GCI coasters are the smaller ones (Worlds of Fun, California's Great America, Valleyfair). I've read somewhere before that Prowler's maximum capacity is somewhere around 920 people per hour, which is a far cry from the (1600?) people per hour maximum that Diamondback originally opened with (and supposedly hit on numerous occasions.) Without doing something something non-GCI (like adding an MCBR), it doesn't seem like a GCI coaster is feasible.

I'm indifferent to giant noodle sculptures coming to Kings Island. If you think a lone noodle is bad, you should go visit Takis' Six Takis Takis Flags Takis Takis Takis. Now sponsored by Discover! And Takis. Also M&M's. But mainly Takis.

I think it's actually just supposed to be toast. People keep calling it garlic bread, which is why I posted what I did.

1. I do like Chicken Shack quite a lot. Haven't gotten around to trying the sauce on the table, but with the all-season dining plan, I'll have plenty of opportunities. 2. I don't know why I care so much, but there's something I gotta get off my chest: the bread they serve at Chicken Shack is not garlic bread. It's buttery Texas toast. Not garlic bread. Toast. No garlic. Yes toast. El pan sin el ajo. Le pain sans l'ail. 没有面包蒜。No garlic. Yes? Yes. Okay. (The above was in jest and isn't actually an angry rant... But, for real, that's some sad garlic bread if it's supposed to be garlic bread. If it's an emulation of Raising Cane's, then it's actually just toast. I'm just saying! )

It's worth the wait.

You guys are in for a treat tonight. Banshee's a fantastic ride (especially towards the back and on the right side of the train), and the theming and lighting are nothing you'd ever expect out of a Cedar Fair park. I hope everyone has a great time.

The Cr... oh. Guess it's Zephyr now.

It MIGHT be Medusa, were it not for the fact that they minced up a beautiful-looking CCI layout for it... [wistful sigh] Out of the remaining rides, I guess I'd have to vote for Goliath. I don't have much of an urge to ride it, but I'm curious to see a POV.