Carowinds - Saturday, June 22, 2013

(Preliminary note, all the Carowinds advice here was spot-on. Thanks for the tips!)

First park of my vacation: Carowinds! Got to the park around 9:30. Forecast called for isolated thunderstorms, but got nothing, sunny virtually all day. Carowinds has two gates (front and back), ended up getting routed to the back gate but no matter. Went right to Nighthawk, walked on, strapped in and...."It's a vest." Forgot to put my arms through it at first. Fail. Anyway, got that corrected and rode. Enjoyed this Dutchman more than Batwing or Firehawk.

After Nighthawk, started walking towards the right side of the park. Vortex was closed (but testing) so did Ricochet. Has the exact same layout as Hersheypark's mouse but with much more trimming. Then Hurler....yeah, this part of the park was deserted. Front row, I was the only person on the train. Kinda creepy. Better than KD's Hurler, but not by much. Still not fun. Then walked onto Carolina Cyclone. Decent looper, pop of air after the vertical loops was surprising.

Saw Vortex had people on it, so went over there & walked on. Enjoyable, I think its smaller size works to its advantage. Kept walking back, hit Carolina Cobra....hey! New train! Cool. Next up was Carolina Goldrusher (so many Carolinas....) Fun mine train, final helix more intense than expected. Eventually worked my way back to Thunder Road, and did both sides. Preferred the right (SC) side. OK ride but both sides were a bit rough on the return trip. Ducked into Planet Snoopy for Woodstock Express.

By this point, it was only 12:30, and already had done 9 coasters. Great so far but the park was (unsurprisingly) getting pretty packed. After a short break, did Thunder Road and Boo Blasters a couple times each. Then returned to Planet Snoopy for Flying Ace Aerial Chase, nice that this kind of ride exists for the smaller crowd. No wonder it's popular....OK. Enough credit laps. Time for the good stuff.

With 3 trains, Intimidator's line hauls. So does the ride. I'm a big fan of B&M hypers and this did NOT disappoint. Lots of big, sweeping hills. Parking lot view is meh, but a small complaint. Nitro remains my favorite, with Behemoth and this right behind it. (Wish I hadn't done CW the year before Leviathan opened....d'oh!) After a couple laps, mostly walked around some, with a couple Goldrusher rides mixed in, plus Windseeker.

Again at the back of the park, finally got to Afterburn. Superb invert. Smooth and very well paced. Excellent visual w/ the station-midway-plane flyover. Took another break, then spent the last 2-3 hours sorta alternating between Afterburn and Intimidator, both of which had moderate waits til close. Ended with 2 night rides on Intimidator.

Left the park, picked up a buffalo chicken pizza (Mellow Mushroom, yum) on the way to my hotel and crashed for the night. Overall, pretty good day for a Saturday. The park is pretty compact with a lot of rides in a small space. The Planet Snoopy area is well done.

Other random things:
* Operations were pretty good and efficient. Max trains on everything.
* Dinosaurs Alive is next to Afterburn. Surprised at how many dinos I could see from that line, especially at the top of the stairs. Roar!
* Random theming #1: Ricochet is loosely themed around fishing, yet the cars themselves have the same "goofy smiley faces" as KD's Ricochet. Awkward....
* Random theming #2: Afterburn has 2 trains, one with bird decals, the other with shark decals. Even considering the former Top Gun theme, I don't get it. All I kept thinking of was the shark from Family Guy. "Hey. I'm gonna eat y'all. ... *chomp* Mmmm yummy mmmm."

Someone followed my advice?!? :-)

Afterburn's trains are painted in interpretations of naval squadron paint jobs. Granted, the cardinals have oversized teeth that look really stupid, but I like the shark train.

For real-life similarities, there aren't any naval units I'm aware of with cardinals, but both the VF-111 Sundowners (sadly disestablished in the early 1990s) and some aircraft in the VF-101 Grim Reapers (disestablished in the mid-2000s) had shark teeth painted on them. Man, those were some great-looking F-14s.

Thanks for the background info. Apologies if I sounded disrespectful.

Disrespecting Carowinds is fair game. Just don't disrespect the Beast.

I voted this post up for the Family Guy reference!

"Hey, I'm going to eat yaw...I'm going to eat that hairy leg too...ooooh and I can see right up them shorts....mmmmmm...yummy....mmmm! LOL!!

Martha's Vineyard shark.

"I could pig out and eat yaw. But I'm on a diet, and I don't want to spend the 4th of July alone again. Besides. I ate a dog earlier, and now I have a bone stuck in my anus!" LOL!!

Tyler Boes said:
Someone followed my advice?!? :-)

He never said that.

He said thanks for the advice, and it sounded like the advice was mine.

Because you were the only person providing advice and not people who live in the area. Right.

No, I wasn't implying that I was the only one.

Here's how it went:

I got advice from Tekwardo, I went to Carowinds 5 days in a row, I found my own ideas and validated some of Tekwardo's ideas, I gave some of my ideas, and finally my ideas were used. This type of cycle happens a lot.

I just think its funny that you tuen every thread into one about you.

Tek, check your inbox. Jeff sent out an e-mail that he's changing the name of his site to "TylerBuzz - Portal to the Dull."

Wouldn't "CoasterBoes"work better?