KBF 9/11:empty(really long)

Associated parks:
None

Due to the fact that national was having dollar airfares on 9/11 I decided it would be a good idea to get myself out of vegas and head to knotts for the day.

Got to knotts around 10:30 and my immediate thought about the park was the fact that there was literally no one in ghost town. After paying the four dollars for an all day locker up in ghost town I just wandered around in that area for a few minutes to get my bearings and stumbled onto a closed for rehab ghostider. After staring at it longingly for a few minutes I decided to head on over to the other side of the park and ride Montezumas revenge but was distracted by the large tophat of Xcelerator so went in that general direction instead.

Managed to find Xcelerator fine and was starting to notice that no one was on the trains being launched and asked one the guys working on it in the station when it would open and he said pretty soon. So figuring they probably open it up at 11:30 or noon I decided to hit suprem sceam,which was right next door. With literally nobody in line I walked right into a seat and before I knew it we were up and away. After an amazing and airtime laden drop I stumbled off of it in search of more thrills.

Finding myself near the fiesta village section of the park and knowing that monte was in there somewhere I once again set off in that direction. On the way there I was once again distracted by jaguar. Since it was on the way I decided to take a spin on it and add it to the old count. Walked right into seat number two and sat down and strapped myself in and soon we were off. Noting the unique tire driven lift we were off on the ride. My feelings on it were that I like and enjoyed its many twist and turns but not much airtime but since it wasn't meant to be a big thriller, it was understandable. Got off of jaguar and headed over to monte. Got into the station just as they were launching the train. Thought the launch looked very good and after the train came back I decided to head to the very back seat so I could go up the highest on the back spike as the front was already taken was the only seat with someone waiting for it. Got into the back seat pulled down the lapbar and had a problem. I am around 6 4" so just being able to get in the very small seat was good. I folded up my legs to get the lap bar down but couldn't get it to come down both knees and I had my left knee sticking out the side of the seat and not under the lap bar. After trying for a couple of minutes to helpe me out the rather nice op said I could do the front on the next launch as that has more leg room. So after waiting for the next launch I get up to the front and found it had the same amount of leg room as the back and I couldn't fold my legs so that I could have both knees under the lap bar so I just gave up and left.

Feeling slightly dejected I just wandered around for a few minutes taking in the various sights and sounds of knotts and thought that the theming was very good. I was a starting to get a bit hot so I headed off toward perilous plunge. Got over to plunges entrance and thought over how t.v. can't do this ride justice the drop just looks amazingly steep and tall in person. After ducking through the que, which had a lot of water spilling into it from the drop I got up to the loading dock and strapped myself into an outside seat of row 2. I would also like to say how overkill and awful those plunge restraints as I couldn't figure them out and had to have an op strap me in as they had to do with just about everyone. This isn't so bad on a day like yesterday when there was no one there but I could see it killing capicity on a busy day. After an awesome(and extremely wet) ride on the plunge I hung out in the boardwalk section for a while riding everything they had there and everything in short walking disctance and waiting for Xcelerator to open up.

Finally at around 3 o'clock they finally opened up Xcelerator and I ran over to the entrance and walked quickly through the que and right up to the station where I decided I had to ride in front as there was only on group of people in front of me. Got myself strapped in and was waiting for the launch when the christmas tree of lights turned from orange and counted down to green and we were off. The launch was absouletly incredible far and away the best I have ever been on the tophat was awesome and I loved the pop of airtime that you get creeping ever so slowly down over the other side. The ride was simply mind-blowing from start to finish and when we got in the brakes I was rendered speechless. Got off the ride on the adrenaline high off my life and ran back to the entrance for another ride but on the launch just before my ride it broke down again. Decided I didn't want to wait because they had no idea when it was going to re-open I left the station and wandered around the park again re-riding the things I liked earlier and waiting for Xcelerator to re-open.

After a couple of hours it eventually did re-open around five and I enjoyed three more laps on before it decided to break down again. Not having the time to wait around because I had to catch an airport shuttle at six, I left around 5:40 p.m. after having a great day.

Overall impressions of the park were good. The theming was very nice especially in ghost town but ghost town was somewhat lifeless with ghostrider being down. The ops were friendly and effecint and crowds were really really light. I just wish that ghostrider had been open but that just gives me a good reason to go back.

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This contest can not be decided by our knowledge of the force but by our skills with a lightsaber.
Count dooku episode II

I'm glad you had a good time. Then again, with wait times like those you had, its hard not to. :) Its a shame that Xcelerator was so randomly open though.... So, now do you think you made a good call in choosing Knotts over DCA?

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Xcelerator-
0-82 in 2.3 seconds! =Wow!

The few rides I got on Xcelerator made me feel I made the right call. I liked it so much I am already planning a return trip for ghostrider. The waits were unreal. They were sending out empty logs on timber mountain, half full boats on perilious, I got a raft to myself on bigfoot it was great.

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This contest can not be decided by our knowledge of the force but by our skills with a lightsaber.
Count dooku episode II

This Ghostrider Rehab bussiness is strange. I think the park is trying to open it on the weekends during the rehab as i rode it on 9/8 with the gold train (smooth as an Intamin), which was going to be added during rehab, but already was. I also heard silver train vallied on Memorial day, so maybe that prompted it.
Anybody know how long the rehab on Ghostrider is going to be???
Rehab started on 9/9 which is why you got to ride it. To answer your question Bob, it will be down for rehab for two weeks starting on 9/9 according to the knotts customer service guy.

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This contest can not be decided by our knowledge of the force but by our skills with a lightsaber.
Count dooku episode II

*** This post was edited by voldemort on 9/15/2002. ***

Thanks for the info!!
Didn't ghostrider just have a rehab in april. I think so, because i was going to go to knott's but Xcellerator & Ghostrider weren't yet open so i went to SFMM.

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"I waited 4 hours for X and all i got was this stupid t-shirt"
Coaster Count: 112

Yes, but a lot of KBF's rides get two rehabs per year to keep them in tip top shape (I know Ghostrider, Monte, and Supreme Scream do this). The fall rehab is much bigger than the april rehab BTW, as in the april rehab they change trains, extended the shed, and did a lot of inspecting.

Seeing as though Knotts has NO offseason (except for Christmas Day) most rides there get two rehabs. This of course is in contrast to places like CP and even SFMM to some extent that have large blocks of time in which they are closed.

They do a good job keeping rides up, but nothing they do could possibly make an intamin prototype have greater than 95% uptime, ever. they do an excelllent job maintaining ghostrider, and gold is like new (is it???), i got a preview after silver vallied.

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