Shoot the Rapids: "The boats didn't fit the flumes"

This whole "new breed" of Intamin "flumes" just underwhelms me...

I rode the ride Sunday evening, in the half-hour or so that it was open between mechanical issues and thunderstorm...

(it was more consistently open later, once the storms moved out for good)

As long as you are not sitting in the front row, the ride does not have to be a soaker. The initial tunnel is full of fog, then there are the mortars from which people on the midway armed with quarters can take pot-shots at you. You go up the taller lift, then plunge down the other side onto the island. There is a satisfying spray on the run-out, but then at the end of the run-out, just before the boat drops off the track, a wave crests over the nose of the boat and unceremoniously dumps water into the front foot-wells. There are a couple of tall fountains in the large pond, then you float into the channel marked "rapids". There are no rapids, but there are four small waterfalls, two on each side of the channel. These may or may not hit you, and for the most part land short of the boat on either side. You pass through a scene in which gunfire is heard but not seen, then up the second, shorter lift for the ride back to the station. At the bottom of this lift are the infamous lateral-firing water nozzles. What you probably missed about these is that they are aimed at the sides of the boat, below the upper rim threshold. Based on what I saw of boats going through with those nozzles turned on versus turned off is that it increases the amount of visible spray as the boat comes through. That is, with the nozzles on, there is a better splashdown show, but it is still not a horribly wet splash.

Again, at the end of the run-out, there is a wave of water that washes over the bow and into the front footwells.

For reasons not given, the back seats are roped off in all of the boats. The boat insert has a footwell for each rider, and each footwell has a set of drain holes which allow all the collected water to go into the hull below deck, where it is pumped out when the boats are sitting in the loading area.

Overall, the ride is decent, and gives a ride that is not entirely unlike the ride experience on White Water Landing. The island section is a little disappointing in that it is basically just a ride around the perimeter of a large pond. It would have been more interesting if the flume were a more exciting design, perhaps with some rapids, or a faster float-through, or any number of potentially interesting ideas. As it is, the ride has an extremely large reservoir in the back section that serves no readily discernible purpose.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Is the large pond an Intamin special feature? Grand Rapids at Michigan Adventure has a large pond that serves no purpose as well and that is an Intamin rapid ride.

The "pond" is typically where you hold water that is pumped through the course. Most rapids rides that don't draw from Lake Erie have one too.

Im actually slightly frightened by intamins rides that havent been modified. Along with your list dont forget about what just happened with expedition g-force with the derailed train... my friends have been hurt badly on both superman ROS rides at darien lake and six flags america... (could have been one of the reasons they changed trains at SFNE version and changed to bizarro) Intimidator 305 was not made correctly. The rides are great but they have a ton of problems and I am a bit skeptic of the ones that havent been modified. How does a mistake like this even happen with a log flume/splash boat style ride... this is embarassing.

Jimmy Boy said:
my friends have been hurt badly on both superman ROS rides at darien lake and six flags america

Could you be more specific?

Probably those nasty shin guards.

Jeff is right about why the ride has a reservoir, but that doesn't explain why it is so *huge*. Its volume is far larger than what Shoot the Rapids would require, and in fact with the flume so close to the ground, there really isn't a huge water volume in the operating part of the ride.

By comparison, that pond next to the Maverick queue house is what used to be about half of the White Water Landing reservoir.

An interesting feature of Shoot the Rapids compared with other flumes is that it actually has TWO reservoirs, a big one in the back and a small one out front. I don't know if they are connected or not (there are three large pumps obviously churning away in the back reservoir; an interesting side note to that is that the pumps are churning away near the base of the second lift, at what should be the *low* point of the back flume. I would expect the pumps to be over by the bottom of the drop. That suggests that the flume runs below the water level in the reservoir, which indicates that there really isn't a lot of water flowing in the back channel.

I need to look at the whole ride system a little more carefully... :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I hate the after splash water soaking as described above. It's really lame.

So does that splash only happen in the front seat? Or does it happen over the sides somewhat for all the seats? Nothing like getting a wave dumped on your shoes and socks!

I have not ridden the ride yet. But, if it is similar to pilgrams plunge, then the people near the front get the "after shock" so to speak. However, there are water jets shooting sideways at the boat at the bottom of the second drop. I'm not sure if they are at the bottom of the second drop. I believe those jets and other water effects are the bigger reason why everyone gets pretty wet.

Those water jets at the bottom of the second drop are "show water". They do seem to make the splash a little bigger (I think they "feed" the splash coming off the front of the boat) but they are aimed at the *hull* of the boat, so directly they do little to add to the splash endured by the riders. As is frequently the case with these rides, the bulk of the splash actually goes away from the boat, it's not like Snake River Falls where it kicks up this giant wave of water which subsequently rains down on the boat.

Where it compares to Pilgrim's Plunge is at the end of the run-out, when the wave goes over the nose of the boat. I was sitting closer to the back (I was in the 3rd row) so I don't know how much of a soaking the front seat riders get from that. But each seat has its own footwell with its own drain holes, and the water drains into the hull below the footwell, so you don't have the large amounts of water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat as you often do with the older flumes.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

If it is anything like Pilgrim's Plunge, then this might help. On Plunge I was sitting in the back row, and on the runnout the left side of me got soaked as a result of the "wave" just unceremoniously sloshing over the side of the boat into the footwells. My right half was almost completely dry. Having not ridden StR yet, but knowing it is not near as tall as Plunge, I would doubt you have much to worry about beyond your legs and feet getting wet if you sit in the back.

RideMan said:
Jeff is right about why the ride has a reservoir, but that doesn't explain why it is so *huge*. Its volume is far larger than what Shoot the Rapids would require...

To me, it looks like it's only that big because of the predicted splash from the boats coming down the first drop. The ponds are designed in a way so they "catch" the splash water (notice the "gutter" on the outside edge of the turns leading from both splashdown areas... waves from the splashdown would otherwise crest over the edge of the pond and they'd lose water with every boat and dump chemicals into the ground). Because the first drop is rather large, there needs to be an appropriately-sized area to catch the water from the splashdown. Even if the splash turned out to be less than originally imagined.

I don't like to be too critical of something I have not ridden but Dave's description of his ride experience makes it sound pretty underwhelming. Two rather large hills with not so much in between.

Can someone remind me again what the cost of the attraction was?

$10.5 million dollars

Here's a POV, which, in my opinion, supports the opinion that the ride totally sucks. lol

The ride is slow-moving but there is a surprising amount of themed elements for a Cedar Point attraction. Between the music in the tunnel (along with a neat peak out to the old truck/loading scene) and the moonshine/faux gunfire scene before the second lift, Shoot the Rapids is almost the Pirates of the Caribbean of themed attractions at the park. While it may seem sparsely themed for a water attraction for Cedar Point it has an unusual amount of ambition theme-wise.

CP has posted the official POV. There does seem to be a lot of unthemed wandering, especially before the first lift, then some themed wandering later. I like the two drops though. Maybe it'll actually be working next time I plan to go. :-\

Edit: Dangit, LK got in ahead of me with the link!

It looks like a nice enough ride but the idea of an "unceremonious" slosh at the end of the drops annoy me.