Kennywood: Phantom Phix?

I saw on another site someone mention that the odd transition that was the result of the most-recent retracking of the 1st drop is itself being reworked.

KPJB...can you confirm? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I've heard from people in the area that the problem track is already in the process of being removed.

I can, and will, confirm.
It will not, however, count as a new credit.

Thanks kp (and lol re: new credit) ;)

kpjb, is it in-house? Please make it right again. Thanks.

Somehow I doubt Kennywood has its own steel tube bending equipment. Seems like a make-good for Morgan if you ask me.

I've heard reports all over the place regarding HOW badly the trackage got messed up. Personally, I thought it was "pretty bad but not catastrophic". Some of my friends have said "barely noticeable"....but they're wrong, LOL. It really detracted from the long sustained float on the BIG drop....IMO. The rest of the ride was sweet as always and still easily a top-5 steelie.

The only other time I felt that weird kink in trackage was on the first drop of The Big One...but that was the first drop, not quite as disruptive as it is wehen it occurs mid-ride.

When I was at KW this past summer I remembered this being mentioned before, and I thought it couldn't be that bad. Boy was I wrong. Just as the train picks up speed (in the back seat), rib cracker! The second and third times that day I was ready, but the average rider wouldn't always be. Yes, please fix that trick-track gone wrong. I call it trick-track because that transition seems so bad that I couldn't imagine an engineer overlooking it, or the Phantom of Arrow lives.

kpjb said:
I can, and will, confirm.
It will not, however, count as a new credit.

Oh yes, It will! YMMV

It really did depend on where you sat. It was pretty bad in the back, but less ugly in the front.

Thanks for confirming that kpjb. I was very disappointed in PR last year. Jeff's right, it was much worse in the back and that's where I prefer to sit.

Wasn't too bad in the front. It was noticeable and more of a "what were they thinking?" than a real big deal up there.

Anywhere you sat it was just plain weird. But yeah, it was worse in the back.

Given the location of the problem, I still don't quite understand how it happened. I mean, it was a roll that happened AFTER the turn was already finished, where the track should have actually been *straight*!

Then too, I wonder if it was simply a misalignment across a couple of track ties. It looks to me like Morgan builds track by assembling the spine and track-ties, then adding the rails, so if the spine got twisted in the jig during assembly.....

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I twisted my jig once...OUCH!

I only got one ride on it this year. Weird is definitely the best way to describe it. Though I did also talk to people who said they didn't notice.

PhantomTails said:
I've heard from people in the area that the problem track is already in the process of being removed.

Are they going to replace it with anything, or just leave a gap? ;)

I've had that dream more than once....

I'm interested to know how that ended, Mike... ;)

Usually the train magically aligns with the track on the other side of the gap. Though sometimes I'm not actually on the train while it's in operation -- in those cases I frequently am the one who must hurriedly try to fix/replace the missing section before the train gets there.

I'm serious!

A "jump-the-gap" wooden coaster called the Cannon Coaster was built at Coney Island but it didn't work as planned when tested with sandbags. The gap was filled and the ride was opened. Scroll down to #15 here:

http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/coasterlist.htm