Short stop at PKD (July 27)

So this weekend I found myself making the long, arduous drive from Pittsburgh to Chesapeake, Virginia, for a Christening (I'd looked into flying, but airfares for the last-minute were astronomical, and as the godfather, there was no way I could NOT go).

Well, when life hands you lemons... In this case, the drive takes me right past PKD, and I happen to have a Paramount season pass. My brother Matt had a free ticket that he'd won at CoasterBash. So, we just HAD to stop in for a few hours.

Now, we knew going in we'd only get a few rides in with the time we had, especially on a Saturday in July. And we succeeded in exactly that. We got to the park at 11am, having been delayed by the hideous traffic on I-95 headed to Virginia Beach (judging from the number of cargo clamshells, bikes, and boards on SUVs and minivans we saw). We headed over to Hypersonic immediately, to discover it would be opeing at 1pm (actually it opened at 12:30pm). We asked if the "virtual queue" system would be open, and were told "No, but it probably is up on Volcano and maybe on Flight of Fear." That's Ok, we didn't really expect to hit Hypersonic anyway in the limited time we had, but we'd been hoping... (When the ride opened at 12:30, the line snaked out past Rebel Yell, far, far longer than we could spare to wait).

So over to Volcano. to see a FULL queue and covered virtual queue machines. So much for that -- we'd at least been hoping to get a timeslot to see if MAYBE we'd get on Volcano. The line was at least an hour, not worth waiting for unless the other rides were equally bad.

Over to Flight of Fear, where to our surprise there was almost NO line. 20 minutes and 2 laps later, the line was finally starting to build so we moved on. One lap each on Anaconda, Rebel Yell (backwards), Ricochet, Hurler, and Grizzly, and a tasty lunch at Bubba Gump's, filled out our limited time there. On the way out we both remarked that we wouldn't have lasted much longer in the heat and humidity anyway.

The park was more packed than I'd ever seen it, but the only other times I've been there were for opening days and "dead week". Lines moved very well. The only commentary I would make is that on a day so busy, the virtual queue should probably have been running. If it ever does, that is -- has anyone actually seen the system in operation?

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--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page

Nice TR! I just got back tonight form PKD. I got 2 rides on Hypersonic. 1 in the back one in the front with 20 min waits.

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-Sean
In 2 Days My 100th Coaster will be HyperSonic XLC

*** This post was edited by SFgadvMAN on 7/29/2002. ***

I've seen the virtual queue for Volcano used last year, but only sporadically (sp?). Anyway, you picked an especially horrible day to go to PKD. One of the radio stations in Baltimore (92.3 WERQ "Ninety-Two-Que") was sponsoring a concert down there, so there were even more people than usual.
jeremy
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"To get inside this head of mine, would take a monkey-wrench, and a lot of wine" Res How I Do

Really? In that case, I"m even more impressed with PKD's line management. Obviously we skipped a few coasters, but the rides we hopped on, the lines were moving very well.

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--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page