"More than anything, it's just *sad*"
Sunday morning was a good day to sleep in. Repeated rides on The Raven and on The Legend had taken their toll, not to mention that long tripvoyage through the woods. I was stiff, sore and tired. One complicating factor is that the hotel is located in the Central time zone which added to the general lethargy of the morning.
Not that it mattered. The plan was to go to Kentucky Kingdom, which was only open Noon to 8 anyway. We got there at around 2pm. Experience suggested it would be plenty of time for the park. I was touring this weekend with "Coasterville" Dave Bowers. He bought his ticket, and I dug out my Wyandot Lake pass.
Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom is decked out for Halloween. Their sign in front of the gate is covered with cobwebs, and a giant inflatable pumpkin squats on the entrance pavilion. A graveyard has displaced the garden in front of their fountain in front of the Hellevator.
The Hellevator was the first of the Giant Drop rides to open in the US. As such, it is one of the shorter towers at around 150 feet. I noticed that Kentucky Kingdom has dramatically simplified the ride by changing out all the gate latches around the ride. When it was new, all the gates had to be closed, and on each gate a pin had to be inserted into the latch to enable the computer. Now, the gates just have to be closed enough to trigger a proximity switch. On the ride, the seat cushion has been changed to one with a higher horn in front, and the shoulder bar has been modified to accommodate the safety belts. In this case, the belt modification was very nicely done by welding a plate to the shoulder bar grab handles, and attaching a belt with a Beams lift-latch buckle to the bottom of the seat. The plate is welded at such an angle that it is actually quite easy to fasten, and at the end of the ride, to release. It's actually the best retrofit I've yet seen on these rides.
We rode up on the side that faces into the park. The Hellevator is a no-nonsense drop ride. It takes you to the top, pauses only long enough for all of the cars to reach their peak, then cuts you loose. You get a nice free-fall down the tower, then get squeezed hard into the seat when you hit the brakes. It doesn't allow for sightseeing, which is fine because from high above Kentucky Kingdom, quite frankly there isn't much to see! Well, there is something, but I'll get to that later. I also noticed an interesting touch: At the exit there is a sign suggesting, "If you enjoyed this ride, you should also try..." with a list of the other coasters and "E-ticket" rides in the park. We also noted that the list works both ways: If you hated this ride, these are the others you might want to avoid.
Speaking of signs, Six Flags has developed a new sign program, and it looks like it was stolen from Cedar Fair. Same size, font, layout, even key phrases were cribbed from the Cedar Fair signs. Worst of all, they made the same mistake as Cedar Fair in confusing the terms "standardized" and "identical". Who comes up with this crap, and does he ever set foot inside an amusement park? At least they kept the simple and oh-so-sensible red and green "so-high" sticks, which are one of the best ideas in ride signs I've seen at any park.
We set off clockwise around the "old" park. Kentucky Kingdom consists of three connected loops. The first is what I call the "old park". The wide loop surrounds the park's kiddieland and features a collection of flat rides. Diametrically opposite the gate is the access to the Damn Bridge over the Expo Center ring road. On the other side of the Damn Bridge is a second loop which surrounds the Hurricane Bay water park, and which features three major roller coasters. The third loop wraps around Thunder Run, and when the park is being particularly sadistic they can close one gate and combine the second and third loops into a single loop.
The first ride we came to in the first loop was the Break Dance. It wasn't operating, and we speculated as to whether it was due to a mechanical problem, because it is an unpopular ride, or because the ride has been modified so much that its loading procedure takes so long that even with very few customers in the park, its capacity is way too low. Dave led the way to the Roadrunner Express.
Roadrunner Express
Roadrunner Express is a Maurer-Soehne Wild Mouse, and of all the Wild Mouse type rides that flooded the market a few years ago, it is probably the most traditional, the most like the old Allan Herschell, Heinrich Mack and Ben Schiff mice. Dave sat in the front-left, I sat in the back-right to balance the load. Perhaps the best way to describe the ride is "brutal". It whips violently around the curves, it slams into the trim brakes, it crashes through the dips, and really does nothing at all with any subtlety. It's somewhat smoother running than the Python at Coney Island, but as you may recall from my description of that ride, that isn't saying much. Finally at the end of the ride, in the tradition of smaller German coasters, the lap bar flies open, then the car slams to a stop on the unloading brake. That's right, at the precise moment on the ride where you actually need the lap bar, it isn't there. I wonder if this is part of the legendary German fairground capacity thing: pop the lap bars open at the end of the ride, then fling the riders out so as to get the car turned around more quickly. 8-)
There's a ride back here somewhere...
As we exited the Roadrunner Express, something caught my eye to the right. I led the way down a long, winding path past the Skycoaster (on the site formerly occupied by the Vampire, a Boomerang coaster last seen in Agawam, MA) and a Zamperla Rio Grande kiddie train. The path leads through the weeds and turns right at an industrial ruin that looks like it might have once been the stage end of a tiny performance shed (or the tech booth for a larger one) that barely conceals the concertina wire topping the fence separating the park from the parking lot. Tucked away in the far corner is a tiny, dilapidated, but fully functional Huss Pirat. It's a smaller model than most I have seen, but it actually is smoother on the back wheel than the one at Cedar Point (it doesn't go as high, though). The two obvious points to this ride are first that the glaze coat on the Fiberglas is almost entirely gone, leaving the whole ride looking dull and faded where it isn't simply peeling. The exit gate is chained closed, and riders come off through a makeshift path alongside the ride entrance. The other distinguishing feature is the ride's location. Any carnival operator who complains that his ride or joint got donnikered [Footnote 1] needs to see this and be glad it isn't his ride. This is a ride you literally will not find unless you go out of your way to look for it. This is further out of the way than Drachen Fire was at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. The positioning of the Pirat at Kentucky Kingdom makes Kings Island's Top Gun appear to be front-and-center by comparison. It isn't that the ride is such a long distance out of the way, rather, it is that the ride is positioned in such a way that it is really only visible from the parking lot, and from there only when it is operating.
We backtracked to the main midway and took a couple of rides on the park's most recent addition, Greezed Lightnin'. I'd have to check RCDB to be sure, but I think this Schwarzkopf weight-drop shuttle-loop is actually the oldest coaster at Kentucky Kingdom. It is also without a doubt the best steel coaster at Kentucky Kingdom. It's a little different now from when I rode it before, in that the train is now braked on the return run as it approaches the station. This means the train doesn't make it nearly as high on the back spike, and that eliminates the neat angle change I noticed in the back car last time. This time I rode in the back, then up front, then moved on.
Continuing around the "old park" circle, we chanced a ride on the Rainbow. The last time I was here, the Rainbow was moving in ways that Rainbows shouldn't, delivering a ride that was frightening for all the wrong reasons. Specifically it was wobbling forward and backward...that is, along the axis of rotation...as it went around. That problem, whatever it was, has been fixed, so the Rainbow gave a decent ride with a nice view of the "old" park. The adjacent Enterprise scores points for going fully vertical and staying there for a while, but it is the ride that was making scary noises this time around. Mostly I think it was a harsh vibration coming from the main drive gear. I'm also at a loss to explain how Dave came up with a handful of grease, given that there are no lubrication points in the gondola.
Across the midway was one of the park's Halloween attractions, something called the "Road Rage Cage". Kentucky Kingdom took a cue from Cedar Fair and put an enclosure around their bumper car building. Instead of turning the building into a walk-through haunted house, Kentucky Kingdom went with a more practical approach, installing a strobe light, fog machine, and sound system to enhance their bumper car ride. I don't think they planned on temperatures approaching 90 degrees (or they might have included an exhaust fan!) but nevertheless the result was a cheap makeover for the bumper cars that resulted an a fairly neat ride.
The time had come. We had reached the stairs at the end of the Damn Bridge and it was time to cross over to the "new park". Dave noted the single flag flying over the concession stand in the (drained and deserted) Hurricane Bay waterpark and commented that we were only under a hurricane watch rather than a warning [Footnote 2]. We opted to ignore the severe weather forecast and took a ride on the 40-tub Vekoma Giant Wheel. The wheel is constructed over a deep ravine, and I noted that there is a pre-test all riders must pass before riding: If you are a little squeamish at standing on the open-grid decking surrounding the base of the ride while waiting in the queue, then perhaps you shouldn't ride the Wheel! We passed that little test and did our aerial sightseeing. From 140' in the air I got a good view of the new ProSlide Tornado which now dominates a corner of the waterpark. Wait a minute, if that's there, then...
Naaah, it can't be.
On around the "new" side of the park we went. Chang's tennis-ball green paint is peeling badly, but it has still held up better than the original school-bus yellow. Since there was no wait for the ride, I actually bothered to go up to the platform and determine that, no, I still can't ride the thing. Dave rode, and while he was riding I noticed that the landscaping under the ride has been permitted to go wild, spilling into the queue and almost completely covering the on-ride photo booth in the queue. It's like this all over the park; for a park that has almost no useful shade, they have a regular jungle of undergrowth.
Across from Chang [Footnote 3] is the park's Chaos, perhaps the most appropriately named ride ever to come out of the giant ride-building shops of Wichita, KS. Appropriately named, of course, for all of the wrong reasons. With that in mind, you can see why we both got quite a chuckle out of the ride's current condition: covered in cobwebs and with a giant inflatable spider perched on top. The worst thing about that, of course, is that the cobwebs are real! [Footnote 4].
An inordinate amount of walking put us in the front seats of T^2. The park has been rearranged a bit since this ride, the first US installation of the Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster, was constructed. Originally the midway was on the opposite side of the ride, so now you have to walk around the queue structure to get to the entrance, then walk through the queue on the midway side of the lift hill. On board, the vegetation has grown up around the base of the lift and in fact brushes against your legs as you leave the station. I just hope those are not urushol-bearing plants! The ride itself hasn't improved significantly over the years; it is still the ride from which the term, "Hang-N-Bang" was derived.
At the far corner of the park, Dave and I parted ways. He could not resist an opportunity to ride on Blizzard River, the rapids ride. I, on the other hand, had no difficulty at all resisting such a ride. Perhaps he will tell how it went. All I know for certain is that he was quite wet when he got off, making me quite happy I had passed this one up.
Beyond Blizzard River there is a long path squeezed in between the Thunder Run coaster and the Top Eliminator dragster attraction. In the past, Kentucky Kingdom has forced people to walk down this path, which leads to the coaster originally known as Twisted Sisters, then double back down the other side of Thunder Run to get back down to Thunder Run. Today, they had the old path open that bypasses this long, featureless path and leads directly to Thunder Run. Odd that Kentucky Kingdom would spare us unnecessary walking; there must be something else going on. We decided to investigate, partly out of curiosity, but mostly because we wanted to ride Thunder Run.
From experience, I know that Thunder Run is a front seat ride, so rather than jump aboard the train that was waiting in the station, we waited a cycle to get the front seat. The ride proved to be the biggest surprise of the day. It's always been a decent ride, and since they changed out the train it has run very well. But today it was exceptional. Mechanically, Thunder Run was actually running better than Holiday World's wood coasters. While The Raven is a demonstrably better ride than Thunder Run, Thunder Run was running as smooth as any wood coaster I've ridden, delivering its signature airtime at all five of the important airtime spots. Even going around the high-banked curve there wasn't even a hint of shuffle. I think Thunder Run is somebody's baby at Kentucky Kingdom, as it is in better condition than any other ride in the park!
We rode the flying-shoe circle swing ride, and took a lap on the Roller Skater. I noted that the carousel band organ is out of service, and then we saw why the path was open under the coaster: the entire midway from the Roller Skater, past Mile High Falls, the game and food joints, the Zeppelin ride and whatever else might be down there has been turned into a Halloween walkthrough. So we still had to take that gratuitously long walk alongside Thunder Run in order to get back to the duelling coaster. And here I thought the swinging boat ride was donnikered!
The first thing we noticed when we got back to the coaster was that the queue has been reconfigured to allow for a much shorter walk, and to finally eliminate the problem they have had since day one of people jumping the bench, trash can, hedge and fence not to jump the queue, but to avoid an unnecessarily long walk. The next thing we noticed was that Stella, the teal train, was out of service, leaving us to ride the more curvaceous Lola instead. We rode in the back, and the squealing started as we went around the first curves to the lift hill. On the first drop, we were lifted gently from the seats, then slammed down twice on the way back down with a violence that reminded me of Geauga Lake's Villain. The ride really didn't get any better as the train bounced, slammed, scraped and barked around the course. For as well as Thunder Run was running, this ride was not. To put it bluntly, Lola was being mean. Not mean enough to keep us from taking four or five consecutive rides in various seats, but hey, we're coaster nuts. And she was mean enough to keep us from even thinking about repeating that 100+-ride stunt that Sean Flaharty pulled when the ride was new. Instead, we backtracked to Thunder Run for a couple of laps to remind ourselves of how much better it is than the Crittenden coaster, then proceeded back past the waterpark to complete our loop and re-cross the...
Wait a minute! There is the Fire Engine ride, the new ProSlide Tornado, Swampwater Jack's restaurant, and...
IT'S GONE! That worthless pile of crap, the Quake, the Vekoma Waikiki Wave, the ride that was never a good ride, that was so noisy that the neighbors [Footnote 5] complained about the noise on the rare occasions that it did operate, that could never be relied upon (unless you count on relying on it to malfunction), that should have been removed from the park with extreme prejudice many years ago, is finally gone. It's usually disappointing when a park removes a ride, but in this case I wonder if anybody (else) will even notice. After all, how much can you miss a ride that almost never worked?
We kept our celebration to a minimum, then set off across the Damn Bridge to finish our loop around the old park. We had but one more ride to try, and that was the Himalaya. It's a Reverchon hydraulic drive Himalaya, and it is just sad. If I were picking a ride for a park, I don't think I would even consider this one. It has a potentially nasty pinch point at the top of the footrest which Kentucky Kingdom has not addressed, exposed, uncovered wheels that should scare anyone with long hair, and an added-on (by the factory) lap bar latch that intrudes into the passenger area. And all those nasty things are in accordance with manufacturer specifications! That's not to say that Six Flags hasn't made some modifications. When I sat down, I felt as though I was back in my '71 Buick, as there are now at least six seat belt pieces on the seat. That's right, this Himalaya has individual seat belts! I ask you...does that not kind of defeat the purpose of a Himalaya-type ride? What is this world coming to? And what is with this industry's present obsession with seat belts, particularly on a ride like this one with so many obvious potential safety issues not addressed? I just don't get it.
We had looped the whole park. I decided to get my camera, then do a complete circuit of the park to get a few photos. Overall, Kentucky Kingdom is a mixed bag. I get the distinct impression that it is one of Six Flags' more profitable operations in spite of Holiday World and Kings Island. Unlike those two parks, Kentucky Kingdom is local to Louisville, and Hurricane Bay in particular is a place where the locals can hang out. As a result, I'm guessing that Kentucky Kingdom's attendance numbers aren't tied to massive capital improvement projects, so the park becomes part of the machine that feeds those parks that have to expand to survive, such as Magic Mountain and Great Adventure. I say this because of the appearance of the park. Kentucky Kingdom seems to be in better mechanical shape than it has been in for years, but at the same time it is really looking shabby. It desperately needs an army of pressure-washers to come through and blast dirt out of every corner of the park, followed by a battalion of painters to put a fresh coat of paint on anything that doesn't move and a lot of things that do. I kind of like the jungle effect of some of the landscaping, but there are areas where it goes too far and just needs to be trimmed back. The rides that are running are running pretty well, but right now the park just looks like nobody cares about it. And I hate to see that. That's how millions of dollars of capital expenditures get blown away just because without regular maintenance, just through neglect, the equipment falls apart. Mechanically, they seem to be trying to avoid that fate (well, except possibly on the duelling coaster), but through a layer of dirt and grime and peeling paint, and long-fading color, it just looks like Six Flags simply doesn't care about Louisville. And I can't help but think that Louisville deserves better than that.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: "Donnikered"-- Literally "in the donniker" referring in this sense to the least-desirable location on the midway. [Return to text]
Footnote 2: Actually the single hurricane flag indicates a tropical storm warning, not a hurricane watch. Mr. Bowers sent me that correction shortly after he got home from the park. [Return to text]
Footnote 3: Refer to the following USENET Message-IDs-- 4vtd0u$fdo@newsbf02.news.aol.com, Pine.SOL.3.91.970406205731.6696A-100000@mentor.cc.purdue.edu [Return to text]
Footnote 4: Okay, not really...Do I have to disclaim all my jokes these days? [Return to text]
Footnote 5: Kentucky Kingdom is located adjacent to the Louisville airport. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
Next: Knoebel's Amusement Resort
Back to Trip Reports 2005
Back to the Trip Report Archive
Back to Dave's Adventures
Back to Dave's page. 
