Photo TR: Jahan's Awesome TPR-Midwest Trip Report!

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:33 am Post subject:

Great trip report Jahan. Kinda disappointed in myself though. I lived on Fort Knox for 3 years and never made the short trek to HW. WHY!!!! Maybe it was the heat that deterred me. Oh well. I look Forward to more.

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:27 pm Post subject:

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:38 pm Post subject:

Jahan, awesome TR. As allways, I appreciate your candid insightful opinions about your experiences. With that said, I am looking forward to getting to HW this year. I realy must test this theory that it is a better woodie than El Taco. However, ET is a masterful work of coaster art and is held in such high regard that I fear it will be hard to beat.

Only time will tell.

I salivate in anticipation of more photos! Taiko Tounge

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 9:17 am Post subject:

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:01 am Post subject:

Day 3: Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom

Hey everybody!

Welcome to day three of the trip! Today I was very excited as I would encounter what would be my very first Six Flags park outside of California. As Magic Mountain is one of the more frowned-upon parks in the chain and Discovery Kingdom is considered one of the new “flagship parks”, I was interested to see some “middle ground” on Six Flags. This being said, I’m going to be perfectly honest—I hadn’t heard that great of reviews about Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. I was told that I’d have to wait for Great America before getting a nice Six Flags treatment.

Luckily, I was proven wrong. Smile

Read on.

Saturday, August 4, 2007 was coincidentally the day of a nationwide “Hot Rod Convention” in Louisville. It was pretty neat driving to the park in our huge Anderson Coach and pass a bunch of shiny hot rods, even if I’m not into that kind of thing.

Finally the park began to emerge in the distance!

So we pulled up to SFKK and entered the park via a back entrance over by Chang for an ERT session on Chang, Twisted Twins, and Thunder Run. Regrettably, Thunder Run was down for an ill-timed maintenance issue, however the park made up for this by opening T2 and Greezed Lightin’ for ERT as well! Great deal! We were also promised a bit of ERT on Deluge, the new water slide in the water park…more on that later! We were greeted by park management, security, and an army of Six Flags PhotoPass Photographers. Laughing

We quickly escaped them and headed for the nearest attraction—Chang!

Chang, test running before we were in the park. The sight made me miss my “safety rides” on the Riddler’s Revenge back in the good old days. Very Happy

MMmmmmmm….stand up goodness!

I really enjoyed Chang! Not quite as good as the Riddler’s Revenge, but definitely better than Mantis, IMO. That being said, the ride felt somewhat “out of place” at Kentucky Kingdom. Don’t ask why, it just did!

Up next was probably the scariest ride of the park—

T22222222!!!!

I had heard the stories. Of how T2 was so bad, that each year they have to remove another row of seats from the train (see photo above). Of how T2 was one of the worst SLC coasters in the world. Of how it would hurt. Of how I would be pained. Of how T2 would marinade me, roast me on a spit, and eat me for dinner. I was kind of scared, especially as in all my years “coaster enthusiasm”, this would be my first SLC coaster!

Taiko WTF?

To be honest, with a set-up like that, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be! I mean, it was bad! Trust me on that! Just not as bad as I had been told. Although, it had a weird kind of shuffling. Like, I’ve been on coasters that shuffle up and down. I’ve been on coasters that bang you back and forth. This coaster, being suspended, managed to rock you back and forth as if on a rocking chair, rapidly, but not comfortably. Laughing

Wes demonstrates the “eagle” while Patrick demonstrates how we all felt after T2.

We continued to make our way around the park hoping to come across our next ride for ERT, the Twisted Twins.

I will NOT ride a “Penguin” themed ride. And if ‘Man’ dares ask me why, I’ll slap him.

It doesn’t even make sense but it makes me giggle!

One of the cooler “ride entrances” to the park.

Despite that cool entrance, Twisted Twins weren’t necessarily the most photographical of the park’s coasters. And unfortunately, only the blue side was running (I forget the names). The pink side would be down—until 20 minutes before our bus was set to depart. That all being said, it was a decent ride, IMO.

Though our Deluge ERT was rapidly approaching, we thought it most fit to first ride Greezed Lightnin’, the parks counter-weight drop Schwarzkopf shuttle coaster as it was a single-train ride and we wouldn’t want to have to queue long for it.

The bridge splitting the park into two haves was an interesting feature. Very RCT-esque!

Great milk, comes from happy cows. Happy cows, come from Kentucky Kingdom’s antique car ride!

LOL! I love this photo! I told Ryan to do the “Greased Lightnin’” dance under the sign…but apparently Wes had something else in mind!

Taiko LMAO!

The ride was fun. Naturally, a solid compact coaster.

As our ERT session was expiring and we still had Deluge to ride, we hurried on over to the water park to get a few rides in.

MmmmmMMm. Deluge. *drools*

I specifically remember showing up to Deluge and having a crazed-excited Elissa jump out of the exit of the ride shouting “OMGLOL YOU GUYS HAVE TO DO THIS!!!!”

Laughing

Sure enough, the ride was GREAT! A totally unique water ride experience, that rode like a coaster but soaked like a water slide. I LOVED it. No offense to the park’s ok coaster collection, but it was definitely my favorite ride in the park! And after all of that, I can’t help but think—

—How come Magic Mountain doesn’t get one of these? You know, it would fit perfectly in Flashback’s footprint (I’ve Google-Earth measured it, in my persistence Laughing

), could be operated by ride operators and not only lifeguards, could be operated under Hurricane Harbor during the summer and Magic Mountain during the winter, and best of all, is a genuine FAMILY attraction!

I win. Very Happy

Anyway, after 3 or 4 rides on Deluge, we realized that the park had now opened. We did a few of the water park’s other water slides, such as the Tornado and some of the older slides, but quickly realized that the crowds had began to pick up and thought it best to try and round up our other credits.

Yup. Park is DEFINITELY open now.

At the Roadrunner Express, a few things were going through my mind:

1) Ugh, this is a long line.
2) It’s hot.
3) At least this ride is better themed than Mulholland Madness.
4) It’s still really freakin’ hot.
5) We probably should have gone to such a low-capacity ride earlier in the day.
6) I *heart* Deluge.
7) God damn it’s HOT!

Eventually the heat began to get to us, Chris needed to protect his head from the sun and I needed entertainment, so I taught him how to be a terrorist and well…

*Random Islamic Yodeling*

It’s ok guys. I can say that. I’m Persian. Like the cat.

Meow.

Laughing

Roadrunner Express took so long that by the time we were done with it, our park catered lunch was about to begin, so we hurried on over to that.

Now when Elissa told me in January of last year that we were going to have the “Italian Feast” meal at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, I was sort of scared. I mean, how great can Italian food be at a Six Flags park?

OMG.

Like, the “Italian Feast” at Kentucky Kingdom was probably my *favorite* park-catered meal of the trip! Like, seriously! The food was great and—the breadsticks! Oh dear God. I think we all took a bread stick for the hell of it, but they were these awesome breadsticks with cheese in the middle! I loved it!

Lunch also provided what would be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, character interaction experience, ever! Basically, Bugs and Daffy came out to greet us. But Bugs got mischievous and stole Tex’s sandals and bag. The chase that ensued was probably one of the most fun character scenes ever!

Like, literally 5 minutes after it began, Tex finally captured Bugs! The negotiations for his sandals would begin!

After lunch, we realized we had very little time to round up our last credit, the roller skater, so we headed over there. Our train was so full that the front coach overshot the station! LOL. Finally, we headed back to the Twisted Twins to see if they ever got the Pink side running.

Nope.

They were working on it, but it wasn’t open. Despite this fact, there stood Tomi in line for the front row, determined to get his credit. If I properly recall, we thought it was ridiculous that he wait because we were sure that it wouldn’t open. After riding the blue side again, we began to head back for the bus with 20 minutes left. We were probably 100 yards from the coaster when we heard it—

—Pink side dispatched. And sure enough, there was Tomi and Ben right in the front row! Laughing

Robb told us “if you want the credit, you need to go NOW. We will NOT wait for you if you’re late to the bus.” We looked at one another, nodded our heads, and we were off! You should have seen us, jumping over queue rails and whatnot to get to the station! We were mad!

Taiko LMAO!

We said they were ridiculous, but sure enough they got the credit!

We were able to quickly get on and get off, at which point we had 12 minutes to get to the bus, which was across the park. We ran. Laughing

As being a TPR bitch, I remember shouting at TPR members as we were in pursuit, warning them of time. I recall telling Tomi that he should probably stop taking photos of Deluge and come with us to the bus. He didn’t seem too concerned. That would change, as we would all find out on the bus, when we learned that he had an unfortunate “camera malfunction”.

Smile

Anyway, I made it to the bus with seconds to spare and felt like I had my A$$ kicked. I promised myself that I would never push the bus-departure time so closely.

Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom was certainly one of the surprises of the trip. I’m not going to lie when I say that I didn’t hear good things about the park. And to be given first-class treatment by their staff and see a genuinely enjoyable park was both unexpected and great!

That should do it for this update! Check in soon for Beech Bend!

-Jahan

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:18 am Post subject:

Awsome update, Jahan!

I knew it would pay off to wait out the pink side! I knew you guys thought I was being rediculous but it was so much fun the second it was actually fixed that everyone who got on the train got to tell you "Oh, now, you can't ride, you have to catch the bus!" I guess I got my just desserts, though. Because I rode it first I thought I had enough time to grab a picture of deluge. Which is when Ryan, who caught the later ride ran past me telling me to get on over to the bus, so I go freaked out, didnt notice where I was going and fell from the thing I was standing on, breaking my camera along the way, and getting to the bus just in time for Elissa to get PO'd at me(and rightfully so) for being late for the bus.

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:28 am Post subject:

Another awesome TR Jahan. I miss SFKK as it was a nice park, and it seems to have had some big improvements between my visit in 2006 and when the TPR group went. I actually liked T2, and while no B:TR, I had more fun on T2 than any other inverted coaster I've been on. It doesn't deserve all the crap it gets because it is a fun coaster. Of course, T2 was nowhere as good as Chang though, and I agree that it feels out of place at SFKK. The only thing bad about my visit was that only one car was running on the mouse.

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:36 am Post subject:

Yup. T2 hurt. A lot.

My ears are scarred to this day.

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:37 am Post subject:

Road Runner Express had the longest line out of all the rides in the park. It was at LEAST 40 minutes if not more, depsite the fact they were runnign a reasonable amount of cars and the line was rather short. I just learned on the trip that all Wild Mouse coasters suck when it comes to capacity.

Also, I disagree about T2 being anything other than sheer torture.
That shaking-forward-and-backwards motion is less than plesant when theres a tight seatbelt connecting the restraints to the chair right between your legs(look at any pic of T2 on the brakes. Girls are happy, guys, not so much)

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:54 am Post subject:

Great TR! I'm so glad that you all had a good time at SFKK. I honestly don't think it receives all the credit that it deserves. And yes, Deluge is an AWESOME waterslide. Watch out Splashin' Safari, Splashwater Kingdom is coming for you!

BTW, did you ever get to ride Thunder Run?

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