Well thanks to Sam Marks and the great SFA PR staff, several members of the CoasterZombies club were allowed to ride Batwing as part of its Grand Opening. Arriving at the parks circa 5:30am, we were escorted back to the ride. The pathway up tot he ride has several billboards with vitals of several characters from the detective's comic book; including Joker, Freeze, Nightwing and even the Batwing jet itself. We passed all this an proceeded to the base of the station where a full breakfast awaited us (though I didnt eat much). The grand opening was punctuated by guest celebrites Colby Donaldson (from survivor 2) and NASA Astronaut Cmdr. Robert Curbeam (a B-more native). After special interview rides with them, we were allowed to ride as well.
I'm sure many of you have read reports of X-flight and the ride quality is nearly the same. I say nearly only because the area surrounding Batwing has been re-sodded with grass and the flip over into the loop is really close to some trees so it makes for an intersting knee-chopper (new term :)).
I'll keep this relatively short (others will provide more details I'm sure), but the ride is the most intense coaster I've been on (outseating even B:TR @ SFGAm). After about 10 rides I'm pretty much drained of energy (granted it's hot out, but still..) It's going to be a great summer out here @ SFA with Batwing and S:ROS just steps away from each other.
And even though I'm sure they'll never see this. I want to publically thank SFA for letting us Zombies in to ride. There were plently of people that they could have used to fill the coaster (all the media that was there, other employees, etc) but thanks in no small part to the relationship that Sam has fostered with the park, we were allowed to experience the force that is Batwing. The park has another winner here!
Oh BTW: the goal is to have Batwing open to the public this weekend. They are not certain if that is going to actually happen or not, but that is want they are shooting for. Also, dont be suprised if for the next week or two Batwing has "limited operations" (e.g. opens late in the day). They are doing their best to get things up and going, and I personally applaud them for the effort.
I'll holla!
lata,
jeremy
--Batwing: The Future is Riding on it!
Sounds good! My only complaint with X-Flight was the on-ride aesthetics. Sounds like SFA had the sense to at least plant grass!
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Musician, snowboarder, member of ACE and the ECC
I figured somebody would beat me to posting as I just got home from the park, but it's all good. As Jeremy so well put it, this is one intense ride. People who spend their life traveling to different parks and have ridden many more coasters than I were scared by this ride. I would add that the station looks great. As people have pointed out about X-Flight I wouldn't recommend riding this multiple times in a row. Luckily the engineers from Vekoma (pronounced Vay-koma, so now you know) were doing tweaks on the train in between rides and the media did some camera setups so we were able to have some downtime. The heat was unbearable today (especially with the supplied black Batwing shirts) and I have a little bit of harness rash after riding around 10 times, but it was worth it. Thanks to SFA & Sam Marks from Coaster Zombies for a great time.
*** This post was edited by Intamin Fan on 6/12/2001. ***
Did the seats recline on the lift like they were supposed to do?
The seats didn't recline back on the lift yet, but there's something so very wrong the way it works right now, and I mean that in a good way. The S turn out of the station is very disorientating and watching the one piece of track go overhead while going up the lift is very odd. We finally got to see the mystery of how the two tracks work also. Before the split (and I'm assuming after also) there is a small piece of track that flips over. One side has the left angled track and the other side has the right angled track. It's very cool to watch.
