GAdv. 6/19/09 - How I learned to stop worrying and love the bull.

I won't bore everyone with all the details, but KK was down and this was my first trip back in 4 years to ride El Toro. Unfortunately, we only had 3 hours in the park and we wanted to grab some rides on Bizarro (which was pretty 'meh'), DK (I didn't really get the point) and some old favorites like Nitro and S:UF.

We did get 3 rides on El Toro, al lin the back. The ride was incredible. I haven't ridden Phoenix in a few years, so it's hard to compare, but ET will probably slide into my #2 spot right behind the Phoenix. The air was absolutely insane on the first drop and the two outbound hills. And the drop into the infield of RT was completely unreal. I remember being dragged over that hill and feeling like I was being ripped out of the train. The last few s-turns were very fast and fun as well.

And the crew was blazing. They were running 2 trains, but there was very little stacking. The line was through the first cattle pen, but it was only a 15 minute wait. I will say that the station is pretty terribly designed (I do know that it wasn't designed for this ride). The front couple of rows got pretty crowded while every now and then the back few rows went out empty. I never understood why stations don't get designed better.

Overall, El Toro is very close to the top of my list of either steel or wood coasters. It's fast, has incredible air and has some nice quick turns as well. The capacity is great, the rolling stock is great, and the setting is decent. There's really not much I would change about this ride.

ApolloAndy said:
And the crew was blazing. They were running 2 trains, but there was very little stacking...The front couple of rows got pretty crowded while every now and then the back few rows went out empty. I never understood why stations don't get designed better.

"Move to the back PLEASE...the back is better!!"

I haven't been to GAdv yet this year, but any chance the lovely Bruna was running the Bull's controls again?! ;)

Also...since 2 trains is all they have, you would hope for little stacking, but damn Walk-Of-Shame's!! :(

El Toro is a great ride. For years I had no preference for either the wood or steel because I liked each equally. Lately, however, I've been leaning more toward the steel due to a generally smoother ride. Yes, I know there are exceptions, so no need to start that argument. But El Toro is super smooth and just a blast to ride. I'm glad we got back in line later in the evening on the day we went last year because for the first few hours the ride was on/off running. We got in a nice night ride on the way out of the park.

I think part of what makes Toro such a great ride is because it is so unexpected. You can gush about it until you're blue in the face, rave about the airtime and the smoothness, and until a person has ridden it, they won't believe you. Every person I've taken on El Toro griped and moaned about how they don't like wooden roller coasters and how Hercules was about the same height and was godawful and....blahdeblahdeblah...then we hit those airtime-filled hills, and I've never had someone say, "I'll never ride that again. That sucked." It's usually more like, "That was the best ride EVER! We gotta do it again NOW!"

With apologies to the fine people at Schlitz...."no one does it like the bull"...if not for Voyage, it would be my favorite wooden(-ish?) coaster... ;)

Hell, for me it beast Voyage! (of course it's a close #2, but it's the fact it doesn't wear me down as much as the Voyage that makes it #1)

Does anyone know if Intamin is planning on building more woodies?

^^Spiritman, wouldn't that be the shiznit? LOL I think every park should have a pre-fab Intamin woodie...of course, Intamin is so inconsistent with their rides that half of the Int. woodies would be crap and the other half would be ecstasy. LOL