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Kings Dominion (KD) Discussion Thread


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^By 305? At least one or two songs are on the park playlist that we've heard. But then again, there's probably a good 200+ songs on the 'park playlist'.

 

As for Volcano, I've seen Volcano only once with back row riders. I've seen fire only once as well. But the rumble sounds are defintely still around.

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I was pretty disappointed with the park's other offerings, though. The only place I could find a milkshake was at the Juke Box Diner, and I later spent an age waiting for a lukewarm brisket sandwich meal that hardly had any brisket on it at all. That, plus a bottle of water came out to nearly $20, even with the Platinum Pass discount. I was borderline FURIOUS. I know that kind of pricing coupled with mediocre food isn't limited to Cedar Fair, but they seem to epitomize the whole "we've essentially got you trapped here, so you have no choice but to pay our obscene prices" approach towards their guests.

That sucks you had to deal with this. I'm not sure when the expectations of park food and service to be average AT BEST happened. Maybe try out our formula we always use?

 

We eat breakfast before going to the park, which is pretty early. We pack a cooler for lunch and eat in our AC'd car around 12. We leave the park for dinner around 430 and pick a place with cold beer and decent food within 10-15 minutes from the park. After that we return to the park and have a few beers throughout the evening.

 

Although lately we have revised out plan a little which gives us even more park time. It takes us about 5+ hours to get to several parks from where we live. We eat breakfast at the butt crack of dawn before leaving (0430), have a driving/eat in the car brunch about 30 minutes prior to getting to the park, and leave before 4 for early dinner. I like this plan the best, because it gives us a ton of time left when we get back to the park.

 

Really, eating dinner outside of the park is not inconvenient like people think it is. As a matter of fact, in most cases I don't think it's any less convenient that eating within the park when it's crowded. Our preference is to choose a sit down place to relax and take a break from the park, but even close fast food places have typically much better offerings than the park can provide. If you choose close fast food options you can be back in under an hour, which isn't much more than the time it takes at the park for you to wait in line, order, find a table in a crowded dining area, and eat disappointing park food. We have our staple go-to restaurants when we're out of town on a trip. The only park we eat at is BGW, which is just above acceptable.

 

Even when we go to SFSTL, which is our local park, we only go for the back half of the day and eat at one of our well liked sit down places on the way. Lately that has been O'Fallon Brewery for a burger and a beer. After getting to the park around 5 or 6 we'll typically drink a couple beers and we're done eating for the day.

 

If you choose to stay the course I hope you have better luck. At least it seems like park food is getting better than it was when I was a teenager. Stale nacho chips and powdered cheese was about the norm or soft pretzels, if you were lucky enough to find the perfect timing in between "not yet cooked" or dry as a bone. If you were feeling really dangerous you'd grab a dry piece of pizza, chicken strips that make McNuggets look high quality, a dried up hot dog where you can expect to bite into cartilage and bone, or a hamburger made of god knows what. Granted, my usual experience was at a SF park, which I thought was the only game in town.

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^ Heyyy...you forgot to mention the beer in said cooler!

 

Sorry for derailing the thread for just one minute, but is the brewery close to SFStL, Zach? Not sure if we will be stopping at the park on the way through or not, but if we do, I certainly love breweries and places with good burgers!

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So there is unconfirmed info from a few different people on reddit that says Twisted Timbers has been running much faster than expected causing the sensors on the break run to stop the train, creating much of the down time the ride has been having. Supposedly, the park tried using a different wheel combination which caused the train to valley that one morning a few weeks ago.

 

I have heard about it running faster than expected for a little while now, but this is the first time I have seen someone mentioning it being an issue. Can anyone verify the accuracy of any of this?

 

I was at the park today for a few hours, and it was the first time of 4 times I've been so far this season that they were actually running 2 trains on TT. I saw that reddit post as well, and I can confirm that they've slowed down the lift speed at the very top to the slowest possible speed as it crests the hill. I don't buy that the the trains are going too fast as they come into the brake run, but maybe there is some kind of issue with the sensors / ride systems. I'm sure they'll work it out. It froze overnight last night, but once TT warms up for an hour or two, it still f**king hauls.

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^ My first ride when it opened was slower (especially since it wasn't a full train), but by my third ride it had heated up and was hauling. Even the slower ride still had a ton of ejector air.

 

Erik Johnson and I were there yesterday, and that was our experience. We rode in the front seat early, and it was fun. Then we sat toward the rear of the train and it was "holy crap" fun! Lots of ejector air on the hills and lots of crazy stunts in a fairly small space.

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Twisted Timbers is a fantastic addition to KD. I found that my best rides were, after it warmed up after a couple of trains, in the back car. Lots of airtime and unexpected elements. As with any new ride there are still some bugs that still need to be worked out as it seems they were having some issues with the blue train getting stuck on the lift hill. Rows 2, 3 and 4 were closed off on the blue train all day. So there were several hours of downtime throughout the day. We did get about 6-7 rides due to us having Flash Pass Plus which I do recommend if you are traveling from out of town. Here are a few photos I took during the day.

EDE96987-EBA1-41DD-9EA0-15A25EB47EBC.thumb.jpeg.03136f9225fe15752b8feb2adf7c3ae4.jpeg

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Ok one of I-305.

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Seems like I'm in the same boat as many of you. As a first time RMC rider, I was really surprised by all these really weird, wacky elements. I spent most of the ride thinking to myself, "Hey, this is different, but hey, this is FUN!!!" It was so unlike anything else I've ever ridden. With some of the ejector and hanging elements, I half expected to be clutching my legs in pain like I do when I get off Skyrush, but I was never really in any pain or discomfort, save perhaps for the leg restraints (I'm 6'0", and have freakishly long legs). My second RMC will be Steel Vengeance on May 24/25, and I'm REALLY excited to see what a hyper version of Twisted Timbers will be like.

 

I was pretty disappointed with the park's other offerings, though. The only place I could find a milkshake was at the Juke Box Diner, and I later spent an age waiting for a lukewarm brisket sandwich meal that hardly had any brisket on it at all. That, plus a bottle of water came out to nearly $20, even with the Platinum Pass discount. I was borderline FURIOUS. I know that kind of pricing coupled with mediocre food isn't limited to Cedar Fair, but they seem to epitomize the whole "we've essentially got you trapped here, so you have no choice but to pay our obscene prices" approach towards their guests.

That sucks you had to deal with this. I'm not sure when the expectations of park food and service to be average AT BEST happened. Maybe try out our formula we always use?

 

We eat breakfast before going to the park, which is pretty early. We pack a cooler for lunch and eat in our AC'd car around 12. We leave the park for dinner around 430 and pick a place with cold beer and decent food within 10-15 minutes from the park. After that we return to the park and have a few beers throughout the evening.

 

Although lately we have revised out plan a little which gives us even more park time. It takes us about 5+ hours to get to several parks from where we live. We eat breakfast at the butt crack of dawn before leaving (0430), have a driving/eat in the car brunch about 30 minutes prior to getting to the park, and leave before 4 for early dinner. I like this plan the best, because it gives us a ton of time left when we get back to the park.

 

Really, eating dinner outside of the park is not inconvenient like people think it is. As a matter of fact, in most cases I don't think it's any less convenient that eating within the park when it's crowded. Our preference is to choose a sit down place to relax and take a break from the park, but even close fast food places have typically much better offerings than the park can provide. If you choose close fast food options you can be back in under an hour, which isn't much more than the time it takes at the park for you to wait in line, order, find a table in a crowded dining area, and eat disappointing park food. We have our staple go-to restaurants when we're out of town on a trip. The only park we eat at is BGW, which is just above acceptable.

 

Even when we go to SFSTL, which is our local park, we only go for the back half of the day and eat at one of our well liked sit down places on the way. Lately that has been O'Fallon Brewery for a burger and a beer. After getting to the park around 5 or 6 we'll typically drink a couple beers and we're done eating for the day.

 

If you choose to stay the course I hope you have better luck. At least it seems like park food is getting better than it was when I was a teenager. Stale nacho chips and powdered cheese was about the norm or soft pretzels, if you were lucky enough to find the perfect timing in between "not yet cooked" or dry as a bone. If you were feeling really dangerous you'd grab a dry piece of pizza, chicken strips that make McNuggets look high quality, a dried up hot dog where you can expect to bite into cartilage and bone, or a hamburger made of god knows what. Granted, my usual experience was at a SF park, which I thought was the only game in town.

Thanks, Zach. Yeah, sounds like a pretty good plan to me. Whether or not the food's gotten better over the years is subject to debate, given how awful my brisket was, especially for the price.

 

Like I said, I might roll the dice on a burrito or pizza (though both will be obscenely overpriced, and I'm not exactly thrilled to be handing money over to the park for these kinds of shitty business practices) next time I visit, but there's a TON of places to eat down in Ashland that are good and much more reasonably priced. I'm willing to spend the time leaving the park to take my dining business elsewhere and stick it to the park.

 

Cedar Fair, this is what you make me do now.

 

P.S. - Busch Gardens is one park I willingly make an exception for because the quality is so good that you don't feel like the park's totally bending you over.

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^ Always great to hear another Twisted Timbers review.

 

I just love the "Hanover Hill" merchandise as I'm not one to buy coaster shirts with stats, a ton of graphics, etc. I would like to see KI do more "Miami River Lumber Co." merchandise for Mystic Timbers.

 

They had some better-than-average merchandise for Twisted Timbers.

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I was at the park this Saturday to get a few rides on Twisted Timbers and wow was I impressed. The park was pretty crowded so I splurged on FL+ cause I had limited time. I'll share some notes below as well as my rambling review. I didn't take any pictures because the camera on my phone SUCKS.

 

Some notes:

-TT was having some issues with the lift Saturday is seems. It slows down to a crawl at the very top and a little after 12p the blue train got stuck towards the top. I don't know if riders were on the train, but the Blue train was stuck until ~3:30p.

-On my last ride of the day I was in the green train and when it got towards the top the lift slowed and then CLUNK. The green train stopped at the top. Operators quickly got on the mic and said "WE ARE AWARE OF YOUR POSITION REMAIN CALM." After about 10 mins maintenance arrived and restarted the lift.

-There is a LOT of restraint checking going on. I saw dispatch times as low as 80 seconds, and as high as 4 minutes. On some rides my restraint was checked 4 times.

-TT is still in its first month of operation, so I am hoping they get all the issues ironed out soon. Hopefully what KD has learned gets transferred to SV so it has a smoother opening.

 

Review:

Overall I was able to get 7 rides on TT from 11am-5:30p with FL+, and this includes the long 3 hour breakdown with the blue train. This ride is amazing. Twisted Timbers knows how to provide my favorite thing in abundance...AIRTIME. The three large airtime hills provide great sustained ejector that feel almost as good as El Toro. The hills following the cut back stall are super fun and provide great pops of ejector and they lead into the best airtime moments on the ride. The hill right before the outward banked airtime hill gives really strong ejector and head choppers! Then you immediately get thrown into a super funky outward banked hill that serves great laterals and even more ejector. It reminded me of the outward banked top hat on lightning rod, but smaller, less banked, and more aggressive. The rest of the course has even more airtime, a fun barrel roll, the drunken double turn, and somehow more airtime. From start to finish the ride is just so fun.

 

I was able to ride 5 times in the back seat, once in the front, and once in row 2. I think I prefer the front car over the back because all of the air time moments feel more sustained. The back row gives more of a whip effect on the airtime hills which is also great. I don't put too much stock into ranking coasters but Twisted Timbers easily makes it in my top tier of coasters among Skyrush, El Toro, i305, and Lightning Rod. In the LR vs TT fight I think Twisted Timbers just beats out Lightning Rod. LR has the best element between the coasters with the quad down, but TT serves up so much sustained airtime that I think it gets the edge. And in the TT vs i305 category.... who cares! Kings Dominion now has two coasters in my top 5! One is an intensity monster, and the other is an airtime machine so I cannot wait to get back.

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Hi I am going to KD on a Monday in late June and I will have the whole day. We are so excited I am a platinum pass holder with cedar point and I have heard different things about early entry with this, can anyone offer help?

 

I will not have Fast lane but I have two autistic teens and we get the plan a day pass where we can ride a ride every so often with a time. This works very good for us in having this and I am grateful to the park for this.

 

We do mostly coasters with a few flat rides. I was at this park once a few years ago but wasn't able to do much with my group! Does anybody have a touring plan advice? Also I am very excited to ride I305 when I was there a few years ago it was closed for repairs. Also looking forward to TT. The mac and cheese restaurant sounds great and I know where my daughter will want to eat!

 

Also can anyone tell me a comparison to flight of fear? I have ridden indoor coasters like Mummy, Skull Mountain, Dark Knight is it close to one of these in terms of dark ness and track? I understand there are different opinions just trying to figure out if this will be a ride we can do. I did watch the you tube video but would love someone on here who has ridden it have some feed back.

 

Thanks so much for all your help!

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Also can anyone tell me a comparison to flight of fear? I have ridden indoor coasters like Mummy, Skull Mountain, Dark Knight is it close to one of these in terms of dark ness and track? I understand there are different opinions just trying to figure out if this will be a ride we can do. I did watch the you tube video but would love someone on here who has ridden it have some feed back.

 

Watch the POV for Jokers Jinx @ SFA. Same coaster, but its outside so you can see what it does. Flight of Fear is pretty dark, but there is a tiny bit of light here and there.

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As far as early entry goes, they open up the front gate 30 minutes prior to the stated park open. Anyone can get in at that point to enjoy International Street. To get back to the early entry rides this year you have to go to the path directly behind the Eiffel Tower. Just show the guard your pass and head on back. They've been doing Carousel, Twisted Timbers and Apple Zapple this year. If you are not planning on Fast Lane, head back to Volcano as close as possible to actual park open. It will get close to an hour line in no time.

 

Flight of Fear is a mixed bag. Some people say they get pretty good rides on it, others say it's getting a bit on the rough side. It's a 22 year old launched, looping coaster so expect it to ride accordingly. It's more intense than most of the coasters in the park.

 

The Mac Bowl is good, but it is a bit pricey. Border Burrito at the front of the park is also good and Country Kitchen is good. Most of KD's food options are pretty mediocre honestly but those are some of your better bets unless you want something different then maybe try Outer Hank's for some clogged arteries.

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Also can anyone tell me a comparison to flight of fear? I have ridden indoor coasters like Mummy, Skull Mountain, Dark Knight is it close to one of these in terms of dark ness and track? I understand there are different opinions just trying to figure out if this will be a ride we can do. I did watch the you tube video but would love someone on here who has ridden it have some feed back.

 

I've ridden the Kings Island one more recently, but I remember the Kings Dominion one having flood lights as well. If you ride up front, it's not totally dark and you can sort of see what's coming. Have you been on Rock "n" Roller Coaster? I'd say it's similar to that minus the theming.

 

It's not butter smooth, but the lack of OSTRs eliminates any potential headbanging or discomfort for me.

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Also can anyone tell me a comparison to flight of fear? I have ridden indoor coasters like Mummy, Skull Mountain, Dark Knight is it close to one of these in terms of dark ness and track? I understand there are different opinions just trying to figure out if this will be a ride we can do. I did watch the you tube video but would love someone on here who has ridden it have some feed back.

 

Watch the POV for Jokers Jinx @ SFA. Same coaster, but its outside so you can see what it does. Flight of Fear is pretty dark, but there is a tiny bit of light here and there.

 

Thanks I will do this!

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As far as early entry goes, they open up the front gate 30 minutes prior to the stated park open. Anyone can get in at that point to enjoy International Street. To get back to the early entry rides this year you have to go to the path directly behind the Eiffel Tower. Just show the guard your pass and head on back. They've been doing Carousel, Twisted Timbers and Apple Zapple this year. If you are not planning on Fast Lane, head back to Volcano as close as possible to actual park open. It will get close to an hour line in no time.

 

Flight of Fear is a mixed bag. Some people say they get pretty good rides on it, others say it's getting a bit on the rough side. It's a 22 year old launched, looping coaster so expect it to ride accordingly. It's more intense than most of the coasters in the park.

 

The Mac Bowl is good, but it is a bit pricey. Border Burrito at the front of the park is also good and Country Kitchen is good. Most of KD's food options are pretty mediocre honestly but those are some of your better bets unless you want something different then maybe try Outer Hank's for some clogged arteries.

 

Thanks this is what I was looking for an opening plan! I will think about Flight of Fear due to the possibility of being rough. The last thing I want is a headache. I have been waiting for I305 and Twisted Timbers for the first time. I can't wait to go on Volcano again!

 

Thanks for the heads up on the food. Last time we didn't eat in the park so wasn't sure about the food.

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Also can anyone tell me a comparison to flight of fear? I have ridden indoor coasters like Mummy, Skull Mountain, Dark Knight is it close to one of these in terms of dark ness and track? I understand there are different opinions just trying to figure out if this will be a ride we can do. I did watch the you tube video but would love someone on here who has ridden it have some feed back.

 

I've ridden the Kings Island one more recently, but I remember the Kings Dominion one having flood lights as well. If you ride up front, it's not totally dark and you can sort of see what's coming. Have you been on Rock "n" Roller Coaster? I'd say it's similar to that minus the theming.

 

It's not butter smooth, but the lack of OSTRs eliminates any potential headbanging or discomfort for me.

 

Thanks for the input I like to hear reports on these rides even though they are an individual opinion. I will do the front for sure if I ride it.

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