Carowinds Trip Report May 26th, 2008 Memorial Day

This past Memorial Day weekend I had a chance to make a trip out to the Carolinas for the weekend. My buddy had family there so we went out there from Oklahoma (which was a 16 hour drive) and finally on sunday we made our way down to Charlotte. We spent the night along with his g/f and her friend at the Motel 6 across the street from the park. So on the next day we got to the park right when it opened up and went straight for Nighthawk.

Nighthawk 8/10

Nighthawk is now my 2nd fav flying coaster, and first fav vekoma version, I like the corkscrews alot better than the inline twists. We only waited 30 min and even though I wish it still had the star trek theming, still a very solid ride and much better than X-Flight.

Afterburn 9/10

This was our next coaster and man this thing surprised me. It doesn't look like very much and thought I was gonna get a slightly better ride than a trypical Batman the ride, but man I was blown away at how intense this ride was. Afterburn (formerly Top Gun: The Jet Coaster) is now my 2nd fav Inverted coaster behind Dueling Dragons, I just loved the intensity and smoothness of the ride along with the tunnels and placement of the coaster, they even offered a video of your ride.

Fairly Odd Coaster 4/10

This ride was very short, very small, and very rough. I've been on both the Beastie at Kings Island and Scooby Doo's Ghoster Coaster at Kins Dominion and this the roughest version of them all. I know this is technically a kiddie coaster and not meant for adults, but thats probably a good thing.

Vortex 6/10

This is actually my fav stand up I've been on. That being said, I hate stand ups and this didn't change my opinion. It was smoother than the other stand ups I've been on King Kobra, Mantis, Shockwave, and now Vortex, Iron Wolf will soon be added to this list and maybe Chang if I'm lucky. The queue though def. needs either some shade or some fans cause we were dying in the sun waiting for this thing which I already knew being a stand up would have a slow loading time.

Carolina Cyclone 5/10

I love arrow to death, but this was not its best work. Good setting, not to bad name, fast loading time, but man this thing will kick your butt if your not prepared. I'm just not a fan of rough coasters and this coaster hurt like SOB.

Ricochet 3/10

Typical Mack Wild Mouse, what else can I say. I really wish they would have gotten the same version at Kings Dominion, but hey it is what it is and I've been on 10 coasters exactly like it.

Flying Super Saturator 9/10

The Flying Super Saturator has now reinforced my opinion of the Setpoint Swing Things and how much I absolutley love these rides, since it was in the waterpark you can ride it in your swim trunks (can you do the same now at Hershey since they built the waterpark?) so you could basically ride it almost naked lol, again not the tallest, fastest, but with just that lap bar and dropping 4 gallons of water along with getting wet, THE MOST FUN I'VE HAD ON A COASTER. The only downside is the the loading times are really slow and only one car is on the track at any given time and is known to break down.

The rest of the coasters were blah, all there woodies were rough as hell and the rest of the steel coasters were kiddie like Taxi Jam, RRR, Carolina Goldrusher.

Overall 7/10

Overall it was a pretty good park, although it seriously lacks in flat rides. I thought it was cool how the park was in both states, there was alot of trees, but those trees should have been in the queue areas where they were needed, alot of the queue areas were left in the open and in the heat it really sucked. Food was expensive, but that is to be expected these days. I really like Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion and the Carolina Skytower were really cool. I love getting bird's eye views of the park.