Dorney Park, 5/11/07

I got to the park at 7:30 to see a wonderful sight- tons of kids in bright shirts leaving the park which meant lines would be non existant tonight. I only had 2 1/2 hours and my goal was to power ride and get in as many rides as I could.

The longest waits of the night were 5 minutes for Laser and Dominator Blue. The seatbelts on Laser really slow down loading because of the time it takes for the 1 restraint checker to buckle all the empty seatbelts.

Thunderhawk was running 2 trains which I was surprised to see so I guess it was very crowded earlier today with all the school groups but the back half of the train with the exception of the last row was closed off. It wasn't a problem though.

The black train on Steel Force still isn't on the transfer track

Thundercreek Mountain is was closed and the trough was drained which makes me 0 for 2 this year

Hydra had 2 trains earlier in the night but by 9:40, they were down to 1 train which I was surprised about since I never knew they took trains off before the night was over.

Comments of the night were at Laser-
1. "What are the water basins for?" "So if/when you fall out of the ride, you land in the water and won't get hurt" As if a shallow basin of water would really help you if you fell out.

2. "Does this ride go upside down?" (while sitting in the train before the train was dispatched)

Ride Count
Talon - 3x (2 front seat rides)
Hydra - 3x
Steel Force - 2x
Thunderhawk - 2x
Laser - 2x
Wild Mouse – 2x
Dominator Red - 2x
Dominator Blue - 2x
Whip - 1x

Wow.. that's a lot in two and a half hours! Good little TR. I'm not sure whats up with SF's black train, but apparently they're making ok capacity without it.

As for silly quotes/comments... I also heard someone one time while getting on Sooper Dooper Looper at Hershey asking if it went upside down! Maybe I will hit up Dorney sometime in the near future possibly before ChocolateBuzz.

-tWistEr

I remember at the end of last season, the black train was out of commission as well for quite some time, it was already in pieces well before the end of the season and I think some work was being done on it. I remember being on it right before they took it off and the ride was fairly abnormal; during the lift, the train was going much slower up the lift, which has more to do with the motors rather than the train, but more importantly, the trains were rocking back and forth on the rails quite a bit and the ride was a good 10mph faster or so. I remember going back to Steel Force later that night and they were down from 3 train operation to 2 and I never saw the black train again in my trips after that. I'm assuming it's nothing major and is just some TLC and it should be back soon, I remember the same thing happening last year, they ran 2 trains only on Steel Force for most of May and then the 3rd train was back and everything was normal again.

any possible prep work for Steel Venom??

I don't think they'll wind up doing anything related to Steel Venom until late in the season/the off season. The new transformers are in and everything iirc, but I think once they finish off the new slides over in Wildwater Kingdom, they might get the workers to go and start leveling off the land etc. Has all of Steel Venom been taken out of Geauga Lake yet...?

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DorneyParkFan said:
Has all of Steel Venom been taken out of Geauga Lake yet...?

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As of today (Saturday, May 12):

http://www.geaugalaketoday.com/Extras/Half%20Twist%20Parking%20Lot.jpg

I remember the black train not on the transfer track last year as well. I hope it comes back soon since it seems they usually rotate the trains and if for some reason another train had a problem I'd hate to see it go to 1 train operation. On closing day last year there couldn't have been more than a few thousand people in the park and with 1 train running (due to high winds), I heard the wait was close to 45 minutes with 4 or 5 switchbacks full. On a normal day with 1 train, the line could probably be an hour easily

http://www.rollercoasterfreak.com/Geauga_Lake/Steel_Venom.html