2 hours ago, Pagoda Gift Shop said:

Kings Island has added a lot of great rides in the past 15 years, but it has come at the expense of how nice the park looks in areas.  RIP trees.

Amen. I was actually very pleased with how mystic timbers came out though. Diamondback I never was huge on. It's always going to kind of be awkward in the park and stick out.

In defense of the park, there are trees in every direction.  So anytime they build anything, there are going to have to be trees cut down.  I thought they did a nice job with Dinosaurs Alive of not taking out more than was needed.  I also thought Mystic Timbers was well done.

As for Diamondback, there were people who were most upset about changing the lake to a splashdown pool, but I didn't think that was all that bad.  I just don't understand why the entire middle of the ride was 100% cleared of trees.

18 hours ago, Pagoda Gift Shop said:

In defense of the park, there are trees in every direction.  So anytime they build anything, there are going to have to be trees cut down.  I thought they did a nice job with Dinosaurs Alive of not taking out more than was needed.  I also thought Mystic Timbers was well done.

As for Diamondback, there were people who were most upset about changing the lake to a splashdown pool, but I didn't think that was all that bad.  I just don't understand why the entire middle of the ride was 100% cleared of trees.

Construction. Diamondback seems to be a rather cookie cutter design. Does anyone know if it was an off the shelf design or a custom design for KI? I feel like only the splashdown was a custom. Really any park with the room could have Diamondback installed really easy without hardly any leveling of land. I just don't like how much it interferes with rivertown and I agree on the pond as well. But hey Cedar Fair was having a lot of financial struggles at the time and at least we got a fun ride out of it.

None of the B&M hyper coasters are copies.  They may have similar elements and order of elements, but none are direct inch for inch copies. You couldn't watch 2 separate POVs where they would match. 

Diamondback is the only one with a splashdown where the train makes it happen.  Shambhala in PortAventura only has a simulated splash.  

1 hour ago, silver2005 said:

None of the B&M hyper coasters are copies.  They may have similar elements and order of elements, but none are direct inch for inch copies. You couldn't watch 2 separate POVs where they would match. 

Diamondback is the only one with a splashdown where the train makes it happen.  Shambhala in PortAventura only has a simulated splash.  

Correct, I know none are clones, but designers and builders make a few designs and then will shop them around to parks with very little changes vs. a custom ride that is designed to go into a certain location.

^Well, in the case of Diamondback, the bottom of the 2nd drop is lower than the first, and the third lower still, much of the layout contours to the terrain, so its very much custom built for Kings Island. 

5 hours ago, silver2005 said:

^Well, in the case of Diamondback, the bottom of the 2nd drop is lower than the first, and the third lower still, much of the layout contours to the terrain, so its very much custom built for Kings Island. 

That's the answer I was looking for.

Similar to how Banshee can't truly be mimicked because the second half of the ride depends strictly on the terrain.

A blast from the past, for those who would like to read through the posts. It was a beautiful ride. Nice to see Hersheypark and Six Flags Great America still has theirs. 

It would be great to get it back maybe even put it through the big box . 

This is a very interesting thread to read! I worked on Coal Cracker this past summer at Hersheypark. It was very easy ride to work when everything was running smoothly, but when it did break down, which wasn't often, there was a very specific procedure that you had to do that was different at each position. It took a fair number of people to operate for a log flume and each person had to practice what to do at each position in case of a breakdown. I generally enjoyed it, but because training was so rigorous, they didn't have a lot of people trained on it. So the people that were trained on it tended to be placed there pretty frequently! I assume that KCKC was probably easier to run because it only had one lift versus two. I understand why most parks have gotten rid of their hydroflumes--they take a lot to staff and can't be cheap to run. I'm glad that Hersheypark still has theirs though. It's a nice ride with a low height requirement. I seemed to me that it had high ridership and because of the layouts of Hersheypark's rides, Coal Cracker doesn't take up a lot of room, so I don't think it will be departing for a while.

Yes, it was a fun ride.  Really felt like you were in the tree tops.  The last few years the ride was around, it was in desperate need of some major refurb.  There were lots of patches to the fiberglass.

Don`t forget about the smell of the water.  Unlike Race for Your Life Charlie Brown, KCKC used pond water that was not drained during the off season.  Fish also lived in the water.  On warm muggy Ohio days, the smell of the water was something.  

I was sad to see it go, but glad that they refurbished the flume that once resided at Coney versus this one.  In fact, Flume was SBNO in 2000, the final season of KCKC.  When Flume reopened in 2001, KCKC was closed and being dismantled to make way for Tomb Raider: The Ride.