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"Now that's horseshit."
We slept in on Saturday morning, knowing it was a very short drive from the motel to the park. I was quite unprepared for what I found when we got there. All of the parking lots surrounding Kentucky Kingdom were full. People were camped out in the parking lot. No, really, they were camped out with their RVs and horse trailers. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized this wasn't 500,000 people all going to Kentucky Kingdom, but rather some huge equestrian event at the fairgrounds. When the opportunity presented itself, I dropped John off at the gate and went hunting for a parking space. I finally found one across from the Vampire, in the farthest row from the park gate. At least it would be a short drive to the exit when we were ready to leave.
Speaking of Vampire, John made it known that he didn't want to ride it, so we began our visit by walking around the park's front loop, taking a ride on the Rainbow, crossing the Damn Bridge, and heading for Chang.
Did you know that "Crittenden" is apparently an old Indian word for "Place where coasters only run one train?" We were planning on a short enough visit that we could make it to a couple of Cincinnati parks by the end of the day. But the short queue on Chang wasn't going to help much with only one train running. So there we were, standing in the blazing sun (there is no shade at Kentucky Kingdom) waiting to ride Chang. And waiting and waiting and waiting. At least the crew was reasonably efficient loading the one train. Chang looks really good with its new paint job which, I understand, is the same paint scheme as Medusa. Once again I took a ride. I found Chang's train to be more accommodating than the one on Mantis:TCFKAB...I think because I was able to have the shoulder bar a notch or two higher, making it possible to have the seat lower, since Chang doesn't have safety belts. The ride is very reminiscent of Mantis, but I still like Mantis better.
From Chang, it's not a long walk to T^2, but we had to ride first. I was a little surprised when we walked up to the " ", which is a Chance Chaos, and there were no maintenance men present. It turns out they must have been working on the Quake, as I could hear it running. Kentucky Kingdom's Chaos is painted black, and has absolutely no identifying signage on it whatsoever, hence my identification of it as " ."
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Fun Fact: The Chance Chaos, the two wood coasters, and the Shoot-The-Chutes
rides are the only American rides at Kentucky Kingdom. And the one wood coaster
has German trains on it.
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T^2 is a little strange this year. When Chang was built, a whole new midway was also built from the Ferris wheel back past the waterpark and Chang, and connecting with T^2. Before that, access to T^2 was a path under Thunder Run, past the Top Eliminator dragsters, and around a long, long path all the way around the back of the waterpark. This led to a plaza in front of the T^2 station and under the space in the middle of the ride. Next to the queue entrance is a gigantic (on the order of 20' high) T^2 logo. In fact, the sign is so big that if you are right next to it, it is easy to miss it completely. Well, the trouble is that now, if you approach T^2 from behind...from Chang...you don't even see this sign. And the old path was blocked off for Blizzard River construction. To confuse things even further, the path leading from the Chang plaza to the T^2 plaza also serves as the access to the new Batman stunt show shed, so right next to the path leading to the T^2 entrance is a small sign with only a Batman logo. Remember, some SFKK brochures this year suggest the "installation" of "Batman: The Ride", with the re-theming of T^2, but for whatever reason, that conversion has been put off until at least next year.
It is well known that while the Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster has matured
into a tremendous product, T^2 was the first production model, and as
such, quite frankly, it stinks. It rattles, shakes, shuffles, and bangs riders
around mercilessly. The term, "hang & bang" was coined to describe
this particular coaster. Well, I've only had one ride on it this season, but
I can report the following--
With only one train operating, the wait for T^2 was non-trivial, so we only rode once. Onward to Thunder Run.
Last season, I noted that Kentucky Kingdom sells an insanely great Sno-Cone alternative in the form of Hawaiian Shaved Ice. This is a very large serving [Footnote 1] of shaved ice served in a plastic cone about the size of an inverted sombrero. I also noted last year that this product was only available at a single stand in the center of the waterpark. I am pleased to announce that for the 1999 season, SFKK has installed a second stand near the T^2 queue. We bought a pair, and consumed them while walking the long way around the waterpark towards Thunder Run. My shave ice outlasted my trip, though, so I ended up sitting at an umbrella table outside Swampwater Jack's.
Swampwater Jack's is an interesting restaurant built on piers over a pond next to the Damn Bridge. The menu is some kind of all-you-can-eat deal involving chicken, but I've never eaten there. The building is surrounded by a wide porch, which is well equipped with carefully adjusted misters. I say carefully adjusted because unlike the ones all over Holiday World, these sprayed an ultrafine water mist which evaporated almost instantly in spite of the extremely high humidity. The result is to significantly cool the air surrounding the porch, without getting everybody wet. I think this is the first place I have seen such misters actually work in this fashion, as intended.
The first time I rode Thunder Run, it was one of the worst woodies I had ever ridden. It shuffled like crazy, it bounced, it rattled, it shook, and it generally beat the crap out of anyone foolish enough to take a ride. Apparently this was not lost on Kentucky Kingdom, as they replaced the trailered train with foam seatbacks with an articulated train with upholstered seats; they capped much of the track; and they did some reprofiling. The result is a ride that is more than respectable in any seat. For this visit, though, we headed directly for the front row, where the ride is not merely respectable...it is amazing. The first drop is a little lackluster up there, but it is a drop into a well-lubricated 180-degree turnaround, which is followed by three short hills, each just a little higher than the one before. At the top of each, front seat riders (that means us) are catapulted straight up. On the third hill, it's more of a launch. You mean you didn't know SFKK had a Space Shot? Thunder Run is one of the most improved coasters I have ever encountered, going from one of the worst coasters around, to easily one of the best. Definitely one of the country's more underrated coasters. It needs a transfer table and a second train, but on this particular day most of the crowd was in the waterpark, so the wait wasn't too bad.
Over at the Roller Skater, there was some confusion on the platform over who was riding where and when, mostly caused by a young boy who couldn't make up his mind what he was doing. The practical upshot of all this was that I took a back-seat ride, and John rode in the second-from-back seat on the next cycle. The reason I point this out is that for my back-seat ride that day, I rode by myself. It seems that there is still some confusion at Kentucky Kingdom over whether or not they are adopting the old pain-in-the-ass no-singles-in-back rule held over from Six Flags. I have heard of riders getting paired up and shoehorned into the Roller Skater, and I have been paired up on Twisted Sisters. But that was in the first week of the season back when most of Kentucky Kingdom's crew had come in from Six Flags over Mid America. I have also heard that other Six Flags parks have been abandoning the illogical back-seat rule. Oh, sure, there is a perfectly plausible explanation for the policy, but once real-world issues are factored in, suddenly that explanation does not make sense anymore. So I don't know what policy is currently officially in force at SFKK, but I got a back-seat solo ride on Roller Skater.
We were a bit disappointed to find that the Thriller Bees were not operating (but the Thriller Bees and the Quake were the only rides that were down mechanical during our visit, and the Quake actually did operate, albeit not on a continuous basis. We bypassed the bees and headed to the Twisted Sisters.
Twisted Sisters has a very long, empty queue area. At the end of this long maze, the line splits. Each side leads to one of the two tracks. The point of division is after the end of the long maze, at a corner of the station separated from the midway by only a flower bed. And a hedge. And a bench. And a portable fence. Kentucky Kingdom is fighting a losing battle here. As long as Twisted Sisters has a short line which does not extend beyond this division point, people will object to making the long walk across the plaza, around the long queue structure, and back to the station. Instead they will climb over the bench, through the flower bed, between the bushes, and around the section of fence. The only time this was not going on was while a member of the ride crew was standing at the division point yelling at people to walk around. Kentucky Kingdom needs to do one of two things here...at the very least they need to reconfigure the queue structure so that the shortest path around the maze runs along the edge nearest the midway (instead of the farthest edge as it does now). Even better, they should remove the hedge and create an alternate ride entrance at the division point to be used when the ride is not stacked up into the queue structure.
That said, we took a few rides, beginning with a back seat ride on Stella, then a back seat ride on Lola, then front seat rides on both. It was just a little too crowded for us to do the Crittenden Fire Drill, but we also never had to miss more than two trains before getting on board again. Because we had plans to visit at least two more parks, we were too rushed to ride much more. After four rides, I was pretty sore anyway, and wondering how I managed to outlast some 75 rides last fall. Those Gerstlauer trains hurt! The ride is still running beautifully, though. It seems to me that Kentucky Kingdom has figured out how to take pretty good care of their coasters.
John had been saying all weekend that he wanted to ride the Quake, and we were fortunate in that it was actually operating on this day. Well, it was operating in yo-yo mode [Footnote 2], but it was frequently carrying passengers. So we got in line. Unfortunately, we witnessed a particularly nasty failure...not serious, but nasty. I won't describe the incident here, but suffice to say that we got out of line and I noted that Kentucky Kingdom needs to get rid of that ride as quickly as possible. I have ridden it, and it is not a particularly interesting, intense, or even good ride, it clearly has major reliability problems, and if I remember correctly, I think it has a plate on it indicating that it is leased from Vekoma. You know, a Top Spin would fit very nicely in that space...
We consoled ourselves by heading back across the Damn Bridge and taking a ride on the Break Dance. It was late afternoon and time to head for Cincinnati. It turns out that our timing was almost perfect.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: For $3, it had better be! [Return to text]
Footnote 2: That is, it was up and down all day...
[Return to text]
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