Cheetah Hunt testing at Busch Gardens Tampa, opens next week

I totally dig 'conceptual' stuff like the tree. It moves like a cheetah pacing ready to strike.

Wow, I love the pacing. You don't see that very often with the newer steel coasters. And I love the interaction with the water. I wish THAT was what they were building at Sea World San Diego.

I'll echo Jeff's 'Wow'. It looks like tons of fun.

Someday I'll get back down there...sigh.

That looks like my kind of ride. I really can't wait to try it one day.

Ok. I'll say it. With the exception of the tower, the roll, and the Maverick-style ejector hill... there is like *nothing* to this ride. Wobble left, wobble right, go straight but not very fast, repeat the same slow-version corkscrew-hill a few times, end.

I dunno - it looks beautiful and the environment around the ride is absolutely spectacular, but it looks to do quite a bit more "Raptoring around" than even Raptor does.

I still can't wait to ride it - but I think my expectations for ride experience will be set quite a bit lower than most.

I though that when I watched the animated POV months ago, but seeing the actual ride in action, I changed my mind. I like the speed, and not seeing too far ahead. It could have used a few more elevation changes in the design, but then it might have turned out like every other coaster, and lost some of it's uniqueness. Uniqueness is part of why new coasters can be built, methinks.

I found this to be mostly an exercise in tedium (as I guess you'd expect from a skyride POV), but there's some very nice off ride footage of Cheetah Hunt near the beginning and end of this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/user/woodencoasterfan#p/a/u/1/oZ70lbf3vgo

I enjoyed the entire video. Thanks for posting.

From what is shown in the video, it looks like CH is running very efficiently.

What's the station setup like? Is it just a single station block?

(Also, has Sheikra ever used both loading station blocks? The two times I've been it just sailed right through to the front station.)

^Not going to BGT for another 3 weeks, but my guess is it's like Maverick.

Or Fahrenheit.

^Well done, sir.

^Wait a minute, granted I was last at Hershey in 08, but I thought Fahrenheit only loaded one train at a time?! Did they ever add shade to that queue?

(Motions flat hand over head)

It's one of those inside running gags around here. "...Or Maverick." Except this time it was flipped around, because Fahrenheit was the basis for the "Or Maverick" joke, or something like that.

I haven't been on Maverick or Fahrenheit so I'm not familiar with either station.

The origin of "or Maverick" was when oG announced Dare Devil Dive, they said it was the only "beyond vertical coaster" in the states and there were a flurry of replies within a few minutes along the lines of:
"What about Maverick?" "Or Fahrenheit?" "Or Mystery Mine?" "Or Maverick?" "Or Maverick?" "Or Fahrenheit?" "Or Maverick?"

Yeah, I know about or Maverick...just seemed very 09/10 to me...

Or 11.

Or pancakes.

"Or Maverick"'s not dead!