GOCC Kennywood Spring Fling 5-20-06

What a great time my hubby and I had today! Knowing how much we both loved Kennywood and PR we could not wait for this event!

We were not disappointed! Managed to not get lost this time (on way there anyway, getting home another story) met up with fellow GOCC’ers bright and early, then off to our ERT on Phantoms Revenge!

As many times as I have ridden this coaster I still can not believe how great this coaster is!! I loved it when it was Steel Phantom (yea I know, it was brutal!!) but as PR it kicks some serious butt! My hubby and I got 13 ERT rides, 10 of which were rerides. Now THAT’S ERT!! :) PR is smooth as glass with airtime galore. The speed is insane and the 1st hill is still as great as it ever was. Kudos to Kennywood for having the guts to improve something people loved but hated to ride, to make it something that people ADORE and can NOT get enough of!! :)

My husband lost his Reds hat on PR (I told him not to take it, does he listen?) then the next ride looses his sunglasses! I couldn’t believe it!!

It is really a shame that more people don’t talk about Phantoms Revenge. It is very deserving to be on a Top 10 list honestly. How I wish we had something like it in either one of our home parks! *sigh*

Once ERT done we took on the park to our leisure. We got a ride on “SwingShot” which is a small Skyhawk. Not as tall or fast (or loud ;)) as Skyhawk but fun none the less. Also more swings then Skyhawk if I’m not mistaken.

It was the 1st time we decided to go into “Noahs Ark” OMG! I had NO idea what we were in store for! I guess I had assumed Noahs Ark would make it some sort of cutsie little kid walk through thing. Wrong! Also seemed worse since we had a group of 10 or so 13 year olds in front of us screaming at everything! The end of this was the worst, (the rocking) my hubby almost fell and almost took me with him!!

We headed to “The Racers” and after a 15 minute wait were ecstatic cause we ended up getting the front car of the red train. OK, despite sitting in the front and watching VERY closely I have yet to figure out how the heck the trains come back into the opposite station!!?? You never lose sight of the other train so for the life of me I can not figure out how it works.
I did manage to get the blue train to enjoy some “Racer hand smacking!” :)

It is amazing how old this coaster is and still runs and looks as great as it does.

We had a longer wait for “Jack Rabbit” but such a great woodie, who cares? We rode a few of the flat rides, no long waits there and even watched the diving show (men in Speedos!! ;))

The only thing we started to wait on and decided not to was “The Exterminator” We’ve been on it before, and from past experience know that the line outside is nothing compared to the line inside.

Kennywood is it’s usual stunning self. The landscaping is always so beautiful, the park clean and the food prices are quite the break from many other parks. We hit up the “Potato Patch” 3x!! Yummy!!! :)

The employees were all super friendly. Even the ones who were forced to be there early for our ERT all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The weather was in question early in the morning, after 9 straight days of gray and rain it was wonderful to see the sun once more. Once the park opened, one minute the sky was blue and the next gray again. It really looked and felt like it was going to rain any minute, but around noonish, Mother Nature quit messing with us and made it a beautiful, blue skied, sunshine filled warm day :)

We unfortunately couldn’t stay for the picnic lunch. Turns out we had an equine emergency at home and had to leave around 3pm, way sooner than we had planned.

We still managed to enjoy our 1st coaster event of the season, enjoyed seeing our fellow GOCC’ers, incredible and memorable ERT on PR, riding everything else we wanted to, chowing down on them fries, taking in the entire park and had a great time!! :)

If Kennywood wasn’t such a long drive for us we certainly would go there more often. We both really love PR and the park and they really made out Spring Fling a great event! :)

Next event?? :) Coaster Mania ‘06! :)

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 1080 :)
Lifetime Skyhawk flights: 17 :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennywood_racer

There's a (poorly) drawn map of the ride.

I'm glad that you and GOCC had a nice day for the event. I think the last nice weather days Kennywood had was opening weekend. It's been raining and cold ever since until today!!!

The "switch" happens right at the start. When the trains dispatch, they loop away from each other, so that if the other train was on your right it's now on your left. Many racing coasters have a similar start -- Racer at King's Island, for example. However, on most racers, there's another loop at the far end that restores the left/right relationship of the station.

Kennywood's Racer never does this -- instead, since it crosses over and under itself in clever ways, no "restoring" loop exists, and instead the train that reparted on the left returns on the right.

The Kennywood Racer is the only single track racer left in the United States. There are others at Blackpool Pleasure Beach in Great Britain and at a park in Mexico.

There were a number of other such racers in the past. Three of them were the Cyclone Racer at the Long Beach Pike in California, the Racing Coaster at Euclid Beach near Cleveland, and the Racing Whippet at West View Park near Pittsburgh. The West View coaster was unusual in that the tracks split in the middle of the ride just after the first drop and came together again at the end of the second drop. This was in contrast to most single track racers where the split occurred in the station just before the chain lift.

I just knew I could rely on you guys to explain to me how The Racers worked!! Thanks so much!! :)

Jo

It's officially the start of the ride where the two tracks loop away from each other. I read this in a roller coaster book and I have tried it on Roller Coaster Tycoon, and it worked. If you just try to use the crossovers and stuff like that in Roller Coaster Tycoon it won't work.

In other words, Racer is one long track instead of two separate ones. When your train comes back into the station (appearing to be on the opposite side), you've actually only traveled half of the circuit.

So I guess in a way, the red train is actually half a lap ahead of the blue, or is it half a lap behind? :)

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Arthur Bahl said:
There were a number of other such racers in the past. Three of them were the Cyclone Racer at the Long Beach Pike in California...

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Are you sure about the Cyclone Racer? I saw a model of that coaster and it had a crossover section near the end of the ride. I don't think it was a single track mobius racer.

Nice TR.

Yep, Racer is basically one long track. Which means that if one "side" is having problems, the other "side" has to stop since there would be problems when the other train came back around :)