Trip Report: <=Kennywood=<

West Mifflin, Pennsylvania - 04/20/2002

"Kennywood's Open!"

The weather report for the weekend looked downright lousy. I figured I had two options. Either I could spend Saturday at Kennywood (40% chance of rain) or Sunday at Kings Island (80% chance of rain).

Saturday morning I awoke to hear a steady rain outside. I rolled over and went back to sleep. I got up to see the rain had stopped but the clouds were dark. I turned on the computer to check my email. I turned the TV to The Weather Channel. Is it my imagination, or is TWC becoming less useful all the time? Things looked iffy at best and didn't seem to be improving. I decided to gamble. But then you knew that...you've already read the title of this report [Footnote 1].

Four hours and a couple hundred miles later I was parking my car at Kennywood. For the trip I'd seen just a few light sprinkles, no real rain.

Admission is $8 this year, $27.95 with P-O-P. Let me see...with ride tickets at $0.60 each, subtract the general admission (call it $7.95) that works out to a break-even point of 34 tickets on the P-O-P. The task is set. I headed for the Jack Rabbit.

Jack Rabbit is my second retrofitted coaster of the season. Only the pink train was running; the white train was sitting on the transfer table and the blue train was nowhere to be seen. Each car now sports two metal fins attached to the bottom of the chassis where the brake pads once were. The old brake handles are gone, and a new doghouse has been constructed Thunderbolt-style over the storage track next to the unload station. It's a storage track I never gave much thought to, as it was always concealed behind a plywood wall. That wall is gone now. With only one train running there was no real hurry on the platform, so we were able to sit wherever we wanted. I took my first ride of the day in the lead seat so that I could see what had happened.

Magnetic brake calipers slow the train's approach to the station, while more conventional squeeze brakes park it in the station.

What happened to the ride is in fact not terribly obvious. The operator presumably pushes a button and the train slides out of the station. It shoots down the first drop, up the hill, and around the first curve. Unlike most coasters retrofitted with brake fins, there don't seem to be any obvious structural changes. There is a new prox switch on the curve from the load station to the first drop, presumably a station check-out switch. It's on the lift where the most obvious changes can be seen, as the track ties holding the lift channel had to be chopped out on both sides to accommodate the brake fins. At the top of the lift, the train rounds the curve and starts down the double-dip with the distinctive Kennywoodie Rumble. Halfway down we are sent skyward as the train silently flies over the double-dip. We rattle through the final curve and through the final dip to the station (from which you can see the skids of Steel Phantom shoulder bars sitting in the boneyard). The train shoots up the final hill into the station, where the skid brakes used to be. The two parallel magnetic brake calipers are a whole lot more efficient than the old skid brakes, and they bring the train smoothly into the station until it rolls to the unload point where two squeeze brakes snap shut so we can get off. The performance of the ride is qualitatively completely unchanged. The added weight of the brake fins doesn't seem to make any difference in the action of a fully-loaded train. It's particularly interesting in that they went with two brake fins on each car. Initially there was speculation that one fin was for magnetic brakes and one was for friction brakes, but in fact both fins are used for both brake types. My guess is that because the Jack Rabbit has a very short, very heavy train the double brakes are used to get better braking performance in less space. Overall, Jack Rabbit fits very nicely with Kennywood's obvious commitment to preserving the look and feel of their rides as they make significant upgrades.

As I exited Jack Rabbit, I met Dave Sandborg, Tim Melago, and Greg Legowski. We exchanged greetings and discussed the new Jack Rabbit as we headed for the Thunderbolt.

There was one major change on the Thunderbolt this season, but I'll get to that in a moment. Dave and Tim were muttering something to each other that I didn't quite understand, and moments later I was riding in the back of the train. Down the hill beneath the Phantom's Revenge, back up to the turnaround, the second drop and the lifthill. At the top...what happened? There was no grating or sliding noise. The trim brake at the top of the first drop was OFF! We flew down the drop and into the under-banked helix. That meant airtime on the first drop! Yes! Airtime on the Thunderbolt! Twice around the helix, then over the other trim brake for the plunge into the ravine. Tim says that brake was light, but I disagree; I think the second brake was about normal but with the first trim off, we went through it faster. The upshot of all this is that when we took that final drop at the end of the ride, I got launched from my seat with an unexpected force. Airtime on the Thunderbolt. Who'd have thought it? Better still was that change I alluded to a moment ago. They have reconstructed the transfer switch, smoothing out the curve at that point so that nasty crashing and banging on the final turn into the station is gone, much more like the Thunderbolt rides I remember from ten years ago.

From Thunderbolt, the locals headed for Small Fry's for fries and buffalo chicken strips. On local advice I tried the chicken strips with the buffalo sauce, but decided I didn't much care for the sauce. WAAAY too much vinegar and not much else. In hindsight I guess I should have known, and I suspect that also explains the bad reviews I have heard of a new-to-Columbus chicken wing place imported from Western Pennsylvania...it's a local taste thing.

We finished our fries and decided to take advantage of the small crowd and take a ride on the Exterminator. The line was backed up in the queue house building, but didn't extend through the tunnel or the outer queue. The Exterminator queue house is a hot, crowded, noisy place. It got worse when the ride broke down. The queue house is an uphill zig-zag in a concrete bunker with a whole wall full of electrical power plant monitoring equipment on the high side of the room. I realized that the place is kind of backwards, in that the equipment, the stuff put there to look interesting, is at the high side of the room, so if you're not standing in the top row, you can't see it because of all the bodies blocking the way. Not that it's exactly staging anyway. They got the ride running again, and the loading attendant suggested that we should ride two to a car. Greg and I entered one car, Dave and Tim took the next. Most of the theming elements inside the ride were off and the building was mostly dark. Unlike the last trip I took, this time the car actually spun, but the light load meant it didn't spin nearly as wildly as on previous rides. As we exited we noticed that Dave and Tim had been paired up with two other people. They reported that they hadn't had much spinning, either.

Clearly the Pirat isn't quite ready to operate. May I suggest a fence?

Dave pointed out that we had to comply with the Kennywood Law and take a ride on the Whip. I pointed out that I'd already violated the other Kennywood Law by not riding the Racer immediately after riding the Jack Rabbit. Wipeout, Enterprise, Pirat and Wave Swinger were down for the day. Surrounding the Pirat, the new "Pirates Cove" area is taking shape, presumably including the boardwalk between restrooms, and certainly including the new (but not yet ready) food stand. I agree with Dave...the new stand looks like it belongs in Camp Snoopy at Cedar Point.I noted that the Pirat is most certainly not ready to run yet as there is no fence across the end of the swinging boat, a situation which could be just a little bit hazardous. Nearby, a big new sign has appeared identifying the entrance to the Phantom's Revenge.

As if that wasn't enough, the Phantom himself has taken up residence in Fiberglas form over the station's pedestrian entrance, making that entrance just a little less pedestrian. We headed for the back of the train; I actually took my first ride of the day in the back seat. The obstruction in the track at the station exit that last year was popping lap bars open as the train left the station has been fixed. A closer examination suggested that it was in fact the prox switch that counts the release wheels to make sure they all came down properly; the top edge of that switch has been filed down. The ride is just as amazing as it was last season, the headbanging inversions replaced with body-wringing double-dips and the most extreme airtime I think I have ever experienced on a recent coaster. You think Apollo's Chariot has airtime? Visit Pittsburgh and learn what real airtime is about! The ride has changed a little: First of all, the trench under the Thunderbolt is now surrounded by concrete retaining walls, so that it's almost a tunnel now...and I don't remember the three steel I-beams through there from last year. Most significantly, there are now magnetic trim brakes on the ride. One caliper near the top of the second-to-last hill is barely noticeable in the front of the train, and in the back of the train you're airborne when it hits so you can't feel it at all. If anything, the "insane" airtime on that last hill has become merely "ultra-extreme." It's the final rise into the brakes that has the powerful magnets which slow the train very nicely. Another caliper on the transfer table/brake run itself flanks the traditional friction brakes and serves to hold the train at a slow crawl as it comes into the station. I have a feeling that when two-train operation begins (the second train was nowhere in sight) they may want to increase the speed here just slightly to cut the station cycle time just a little. That caliper is a good sample of how magnetic brakes work, as the train reaches a particular speed, then remains at that speed until the last fin pulls out of the caliper. The ride is pretty much ready for two-train operation now; there will be no problem at all stopping the train short of the station. Best of all, the performance remains unchanged. And now that I have ridden six different coasters with magnetic brakes [Footnote 2] I'm more convinced than ever that these things are the best thing to happen to roller coasters probably since the invention of the anti-rollback dog. Expect to see more magnets incorporated into coasters; between the Wild Mouse, Jack Rabbit, and Phantom's Revenge, Kennywood has lots of examples of ways to do it right.

The magnetic trims do not affect the ultra-extreme last hill. The green objects visible below the rail in the second photo are the magnetic brake calipers that regulate the speed of the train as it enters the station.

For reasons unknown, the Thunderbolt went down for the rest of the day. We rode the Old Mill, where we noticed that there have been some changes to the controls. The control stand has been relocated, the (long disused) hand levers have been removed from the station brakes, and the old brass air control levers have been replaced with new air controls that look suspiciously like the controls that used to run the Thunderbolt. Greg claims that security cameras have been installed inside the ride. I didn't see any monitors or cameras (but then it's pretty dark in there) but I did notice that there were no employees inside sleepi...er...watching over the ride.

Rides on the Jack Rabbit and Racer were taken in accordance with the previously mentioned Kennywood Law. On the Racer, the lead car of the green train was mysteriously roped off, and the red train was not quite ready to go yet as it lacks seat cushions. Hey, it's the first day of the season. And the Racer was performing as usual in the area where it counts.

The weather had turned warm and sunny. We noted that Kiddieland is getting a bit of a makeover, with tinted, pattern-stamped asphalt that looks like brick, some relocation of a couple of rides, and it looks like the Kiddie Turtle is being reinstalled right behind the dining patio, with new decking and fencing.

Elsewhere in the park, the Flying Carpet has been totally refurbished and repainted, and is running very nicely, possibly even slightly better than before. One thing we noticed is that the seat belts are now color-coded, though I found the belt to be just a little bit short. Speaking of short belts, I was almost not able to ride Pitt Fall because the new-for-2001 safety belt is so short. The interesting thing about that is that without the belt, the bar needs to be down that far to keep riders from submarining out of the seat. But the safety belt would itself prevent such an incident, so with the belt it should be allowable for the bar to be somewhat higher. But since the purpose of the belt is to measure the bar position...well, I could go on about that for a while. Bottom line is I was able to ride, although it required a little bit of shoulder-crushing for me to fit. We rode on the side that faces the river, and from the top you get a really dramatic view from up there. The tower is a couple of hundred feet tall by itself, but it's another couple hundred feet down to the river, so from the top it's a VERY long way down. I like the ride, but I find it unaccommodating so I seldom ride it more than once per visit.

Let me see...what else did I do. We rode the Gold Rusher, which prompted shouts of, "NOW YOU WILL PAY!!!" from our car. The Log Jammer was not yet functional, but the Roll-O-Plane was running very nicely so far as I could tell. Next to the Roll-O-Plane is a new High Striker game...a "real" High Striker, with a bell on top and a little metal slug to send up the pole, replacing the electronic one. We inspected the merchandise in all of the shops but didn't see anything particularly amazing. Cheese-on-a-Stick has not returned, and the cheesesteak sandwiches have disappeared from the food service menu. We rode the Auto Ride which has new concrete and new decking in the station, but quite frankly I don't remember it well enough to know exactly how it was changed. The Kangaroo (Flying Coaster) remains one of my all-time favorite classic flat rides. We noted that the side padding on the Bayern Kurve is less effective than it should be because the seat back pad is so thick. Early in the day the Raging Rapids ride was running, but was shut down by late afternoon...people wishing to get drenched would have to settle for the Pittsburg Plunge. The Turtle is a good place from which to get some good views of Phantom's Revenge, not to mention some interesting sounds that come from the support columns as Phantom approaches.

Thanks to the light crowds we managed to get lots of rides on Racer, Jack Rabbit, and most important on Phantom's Revenge. I was surprised when the announcement came through that the park would be closing at 9:00 pm. Surprised first of all that they announced it, and second that it was that late; I figured it might be earlier because of the light crowd. In fact, I finished up with a quick carousel ride at about 8:30. We swapped early season schedules and went our separate ways. Because of the "early" close I stopped for dinner on the way home, pulling into my driveway at about 2:00am. I'd had lots of fun, and the only real rain I encountered all day was a five-minute rainstorm near Pataskala at 1:30 in the morning. That ought to teach me to pay any attention to the weather forecast.

Oh, I figure I used the equivalent of 52 tickets, meaning my $27.95 admission was a $39.20 value.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Footnote 1: "Trip Report: <=Kennywood=<, West Mifflin, Pennsylvania - 04/20/2002" [Return to text]

Footnote 2: Mad Mouse, Idlewild; Superman: Ride of Steel, Darien Lake; Millennium Force, Cedar Point; The Beast, Kings Island; Jack Rabbit and Phantom's Revenge, Kennywood. [Return to text]

Next: Paramount's Kings Island (#3)/Wonderpark

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