Myrtle Beach Coasters

Just returned to PA from a great trip. In myrtle Beach I went to Family Kingdom to ride Swamp Fox. Always a treat, nice ride, but the sign says voted 8th best wooden coaster in USA. No way??????????

And I also went to the Farewell Season at the MB Pavilion. What a shame. WHY B&C WHY??????? The only good that will come out of it is the tearing down of that aweful, wicked, painful and rotten coaster the Hurricane. OUCH! I knew it was bad but had to go for one last ride. The one op told me that when they put it in it was nice and smooth, with a top speed of 56mph. When the increased the speed to 72mph is when it became so wicked. Is that even possible to increase the speed of a coaster????????

I'm sure in some year it was voted #8. Notice there is no date of reference on that sign.

IMO They should tear down Hurricane, put swap fox there take a couple other rides from FK and close it instead of MBP.

It could also have been voted #8 by the park itself, although I'm not sure why they wouldn't have instead voted it #1!

The only way Hurricane could go that fast is if it ran DURING a hurricane....MIGHT make the ride tolerable, who knows...

Kinda surprising to me to have ridden both Tsunami (J2) and Hurricane...similar-ish layouts, but the one in Jersey was super-intense and fun, while Myrtle's was....ummmmm...surviveable...mostly.

Honestly, the only way to speed up a gravity-driven ride is to speed up the lift, and we've had several discussions here where the engineers among us have shown even that creates a MINOR difference in top speed at most.

That was my understanding. I think parks have tried to slow coasters down by slowing the speed of the lift and the difference was negligible at best so I doubt that increasing the speed would do anything. But then again I'm no professional!

Theoreticaly if there were trims on the first drop, they could speed up the coaster by removing or not using them.

*cough* Mean Streak *cough* Mantis*cough*

Excuse me ;)

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Mamoosh said:
I'm sure in some year it was voted #8. Notice there is no date of reference on that sign.

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Right, and the coaster is 40 years old so my guess would be that sometime in the 70's or 80's when there were a limited amount of wooden coasters in the US, it could have reasonably been voted #8.

Of course, it ranks #1 for me as a sentimental favorite. It was my first wooden coaster in 1969.

Man am I really gonna miss the MB Pavilion

MBP...Very cool place. Hate to see it go.

^I was there this past weekend (Sept 23-24)which was the last weekend for the general public. The Pavilion was extemely crowded. The lines to get in at the 1pm opening were amazingly long.

Family Kingdom had a pretty good crowd too. Rarely do I see a line for the Swamp Fox like I did Saturday night.

I'm going to miss the Pavilion too. Also, I'm going to miss going cruising down Ocean Blvd by the Pavilion. So much excitement. It was just an electric feeling. I wish I could go down next Saturday, but I'll be at the Pitt game in the marching band.

Farewell Pavilion. You will be sorely missed (almost as bad as my legs felt after riding Hurricane twice.)

When is the Pavillion scheduled to be taken apart?

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/15596205.htm

In the article it says the rides will be coming down soon, a process that will take through next June.