violakat03

Shafer Swings becoming Water Swings again is one of their better ideas. Moving them off the water made a LOT of people very upset. I never got to ride them over the water because of the restraints, but after losing a significant amount of weight I fit in yoyos again so I can't wait to ride them. Also looking forward to a re-tracked Cornball. It wasn't bad on my last visit in 2010 but I'd heard it was neglected over the past two season and was getting to be in bad shape.

Friday in mid-June will be busy. Definitely get a Q2Q. It's $15 per person plus tax. If you buy a gold pass, the discount applies to it also. It will be more useful for shows than anything (guarantees a seat, and in the best section of the theater), but rides will line up as well. Eagle and Mystery Mine will hit hour-plus waits in the summer. However, a completely full-to-the-midway queue on Thunderhead is only about 20-30 minutes so don't freak out if you see that. Reserve Mystery Mine and wait for Thunderhead. The "smoke" of the Smoky Mountains is usually low-hanging clouds or a misty fog. They are often covered in haze during the summer, unfortunately, due to the high traffic pollution in the area.

I had a dream I was on Tennessee Tornado this afternoon .... oh wait, no I actually was.

Don't forget to let us know how it goes! Questions I've been asked at park interviews (I've worked for 3 of them, including KI) have always included why you want to work at that park. Be honest about this one - I told an interviewer that I wanted to work at KI because I spend so much time there I might as well get paid for it! He said that was the best answer he'd heard all day, and in the end I got the job.

According to the flyer, student tickets are only available at the Ohio Union and you have to show a current ID (meaning they'll probably swipe it to verify you're currently registered) in order to purchase them. The "alumni" tickets are available for anyone and those are the ones you can purchase online. The current student tickets are $10 cheaper.

Hard: Pic taken inside a restraurant. This was taken in the International Restaurant at the KIC Off-Season Blues 2009 tour. I *know* I have pictures from inside the Festhaus but I can't find any of them. I'll continue yours on, VortexBFF Easy: A flat ride on a sunny day Hard: Diamondback's broken phone box Expert: Pic taken inside of a LaRosa's

Student tickets are cheaper than alumni tickets. I have my student ID still but I haven't been a student for almost a year now.

Dang, too bad I'm not a student any more!

We went the Friday before our wedding, so that would have been October 5th. So I'll trust coasterfanatic's math and say 5 1/2 months.

I totally see that happening to us.

I don't know for sure if it was actually moving or not, lol. Easy: The Great Pumpkin Coaster Hard: Diamondback's "broken phone" box Expert: ACE landmark plaque at The Beast

I really believe that one day, there will be a headline somewhere ... "Two injured in spinning ride accident" because the car went flying off the ride.

Since you work at Dollywood and are very knowledgable about the park, I have a few questions. I haven't been in a few years, but I decided to buy season passes this year. Can you tell me about the Season Pass Preview Day on March 22nd? What are the hours? How crowded is it compared to the Public Opening on the 23rd? I have a friend on the bigger side (he's about 6'5" and a little heavy), will he have any trouble fitting on the Dizzy Disk or the Mountain Slidewinder? I've heard that the seats might be uncomfortable for some and wondered. Thanks for your help and useful tips! Pretty sure preview day hours are 10-7 but they aren't really posted anywhere. I can confirm on Monday. Preview day will be less crowded than opening day. It's hard to guess what the crowds will be like, as it largely depends on weather. 2011's preview day was very moderate with few lines, but opening day was very busy because the weather was beautiful. 2012 was very busy both days because we were opening a brand new B&M wing rider and the weather was fairly nice. In 2010, both days were deserted because it was rainy and cold. As far as your friend fitting, Slidewinder doesn't even have restraints. They are a custom built boat that's more like a mat. He should have no problem. Dizzy Disk, in my opnion, is uncomfortable for everyone regardless of size because the restraints are rather awkward. The two rides I would say he should be concerned about are Mystery Mine and Wild Eagle. They are a similar size to Drop Tower's restraints. Also, Wild Eagle has a maximum height of 6'6" and most people who are close to that height have a difficult time getting in because of their shoulders.

At about 1:45 in this video, you can see me and dare-to-fly on Tip Top at Stricker's Grove. We're the ones spinning so fast the car's about to fly off.

We had to get out and push when we undershot the station on Blue Streak at Conneaut Lake back in 2010. It was pretty entertaining.

He's still proud of that fact and likes to gloat about it on occasion.

I know nothing about protocol, but every situation mentioned here is for EMPLOYEES climbing the ride. When it comes to evac'ing a train on the lift, they never wear harnesses, do they? I've personally never seen it, as the stair cases are built to be safe without them (or at least so it seems, again I'm no expert on all the code). I can't imagine if Gatekeeper breaks down on the lift, they would harness every person taken off the ride and walked down the ride. That said, I guess these people would qualify more under the "Employee" side of things... so who knows. If we were to evac from Eagle's lift, yes, we would put guests in harnesses and have them attached to the fall protection cable. Yes, it's a huge pain but it's for everyone's safety and based on the state's recommendations. Based on previous evacuation practice drills, we're estimating it would take somewhere between 1 1/2 to 2 hours to evacuate a full train because you can only take 4 guests down at a time. On all other rides at Dollywood, the employees are harnessed on the lift and are able to place themselves in between the guests and any potential fall point, so guests do not need to be harnessed. However, in the GK pics, no one was harnessed, neither employees nor the photographers. Whether this is because of state policy, park policy, or what exactly, I can only guess.

Her camera bag. You can see it more clearly in picture #28.

Don't forget the former KI alternative - Americana/LeSourdesville Lake. While most of the park is gone, it still holds great memories for my husband and I. My very first roller coaster was Little Dipper when I was 4 years old, and he grew up riding Screechin' Eagle. I unfortunately never rode the Eagle, as I never went to the park after I started riding coasters since I didn't know it was open in 2002 until after it had closed again. Other than Americana, the only completely defunct park I've visited is Libertyland in Memphis, TN, original home of Zippin Pippin. I visited there in June 2005 and was able to ride the original Zippin Pippin in it's last months of operation. I also got the Arrow corkscrew, Revolution, which is in pieces in Pennsylvania still.

Not only do we have to wear harnesses and be attached to a cable for fall protection, so do the guests if we were to evacuate from the lift. We wear full body harnesses (as seen in my avatar - which was taken at the top of Eagle's lift) but the guests would wear simple belt-style harnesses that just go around their waist.

From personal observation, the two largest impacts of a coaster's speed without significant modification are weather conditions and train weight. Compare the run time of a coaster on a cold morning with an empty train to that of a cool (not cold) night when it has been running full trains all day and is carrying a full load of passengers ... you will get a cycle time of several seconds shorter. A very fast way to see this difference is on Tennessee Tornado. On cold days with empty trains, it will actually be running so slow that it loses quite a bit of it's centrifugal (sp?) force in the spyro loop. You will hear it "fall" on to the upstop wheels a little past halfway through - it makes a pretty amusing groan as it does so. If it's been running all day with full trains and is nice and warmed up, it will clear the spyro loop without ever touching the upstops. The cycle time will vary by 4-5 seconds throughout the season, dependent on running conditions. On The Beast, you can judge the speed difference in the train by how far up lift #2 it catches the chain. On cold mornings with empty trains, the front car of the train will not reach the first evacuation staircase before it catches. Under optimal wood coaster conditions (at the end of the day, full train, cool, rainy - Haunt is perfect for this), it will catch with as many as 3 cars above that staircase.

I notice they are not wearing harnesses. Interesting.

My best piece of advice: Don't go on opening weekend. Seriously. I've made that mistake in the past. The extremely short off-season means they aren't exactly prepared for full opening. Expect late openings on everything (it was after noon before a single one of the coasters opened, many didn't open until 3 pm), one train operation on every coaster, and a few may not even open at all. When we made that mistake in 2010, Goliath, Superman, Mind Bender, Batman, and Georgia Scorcher all had over an hour (sometimes hour and a half plus) wait all day (a relative term as they were only open for a few hours) despite a fairly small crowd because of one train operation. Great American Scream Machine wasn't open, and I don't believe Ninja was either. We spent most of the day riding flats and Georgia Cyclone. For the first two hours we were there, we could only ride the train because it was the only thing open. I've heard the two years since then haven't been exactly peachy either. We also had problems with our season passes scanning for parking and admission (we'd processed the prior year), only a handful of food stands were open with long lines, and just generally seemed like everything was in chaos. I'd recommend that you wait a few weeks for them to get it together.

Let's just say, we are ALL really proud of our Golden Ticket win over Holiday World this past year. In 2011 they beat us by 4%. In 2012, we beat them by 26% ... so ... yeah, we're proud of that and we want to hold on to it.

The atmosphere at Dollywood is certainly amazing. Something that sets us apart from a lot of other parks is the average age of our employees. We hire a LOT of retirees, so I often feel like I have multiple grandpas when I'm at work! I'm 27 and I am the youngest team lead in the attractions department, so that right there tells you a bit about how different things are from parks like Kings Island. You will experience southern hospitality at it's best at Dollywood. There is so much more to the park than just the rides, and I really think you will love it.