Any news on Kennywood's New Sky Rocket Coaster?

Hello Coaster Fans Who Are Now Counting Down To The Hours Until Cedar Point's Opening Day,

I was wondering why no posts on Kennywood's new Sky Rocket coaster? Did it open? How's the park look this year? etc...

This is the first time (that I can remember) that a new coaster opens up, and I hear nothing about it, no pictures, nothing. I haven't been able to find any accounts of it not opening on time. Everything I have seen says the park and ride opened up this past weekend. Kind of weird...

-RollerCoasterGod

Sky Rocket is not expected to open until sometime in June.

Kpconnection hasn't even posted a construction update since April 28th. Not reading anything into it, but there does seem to have been a dearth of information in the last two weeks.

I was at Kennywood on Saturday. Construction was in progress on Sky Rocket. It appears that the ride is mostly complete, with a few missing supports here and there, except for two chunks of track. One is the main tower, the other is a section of return track adjacent to the tower, which is probably left out to leave room to get the crane in. The rest of the ride is surprisingly short (as in "not tall") in that it seems to barely clear the vegetation along Kennywood Boulevard. That said, the end of the ride closest to the midway is all elevated just enough to make me wonder if they are planning on putting the Turnpike underneath the ride once it's all done.

What surprised me is how short the first launch appears to be, and how little clearance there is around the diminutive station. It is not obvious how they plan to run the queues for this thing; the station sits where the Rotor used to be, and most of the ride is on the other side of the entrance tunnel.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Actually KPconnection posted an update on May 4, but they never got around to updating the links on the rest of the site. Since that update, they've done some more work on the station (the roof is at least covered now). I haven't seen anything since Sunday so it's possible they could have done some more work, but I know someone that was there yesterday and she said there were maybe two people walking around tightening bolts (it rained all day).

If you look at the layout, the only thing really missing at this point is the first hill and the barrel roll. The crane putting the rest of the ride together was located in that area, and so they obviously needed to pull the crane out before they could finish it. The tunnel is where the slow down zone makes a right hand turn into the station track (you can even see the gap in the supports on the launch track there).

EDIT: This was all I could find about the queue. On April 20th, someone posted this. The photo booth he is talking about is the one for Garfield's Nightmare.

The queue starts by the photo booth and you immediately enter a bull-pen area. After a few switchbacks, you weave up towards the highway and over the tunnel between the launch and brake tracks. Overflow out of the queue, if there is any, can be directed back along the midway next to the Nightmare where the old Turnpike line was.

And on April 24, someone else posted this:

The entrance to the queue will be underneath of the gap in the supports of the overbank before the surf curves.

I thought there was another post saying they had changed their mind about where the queue would be, but I couldn't find it so maybe that was before these two were posted.

And I forgot to mention that the drop off the MCBR still needs track. As for opening, it appears likely to be anywhere from Memorial Day to mid-June.

Mid-June at the earliest.

^ See that's what I thought too, although a couple of the local media outlets were saying last week that it would/could be as early as Memorial Day. The other ones were saying no later than early June.

They posted this on their facebook page

The very last section of track was set in place this morning! The final piece was the peak of the launch hill. Get ready to ride in early June!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/West-Mifflin-PA/Kennywood-Park/123450319864