Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (5/30/03)

"I thought mechanics only did that in Roller Coaster Tycoon"

SFKK is the second stop on the Stark Raven Mad weekend that Jerry and I are taking. With careful planning we left in time to arrive at the park about 20 minutes before opening. Most of the time however was lost when we got in a ticket line behind a woman that had 10,000 questions and was taking forever. Still we entered the park right at the opening bell.

The whole ticket line thing was diminished however when we entered and found the park not quite awake. We first headed to Roadrunner Express which was not open yet and already had a fairly long line built up for it.

We headed to Greezed Lightning which was not open yet and had the path back to it blocked off. We retraced our steps to Hellevator which did not have that big of a line, watched the ride get stuck about a third of the way up and quickly bailed out of that line.

Neither coaster on the front half of the park was open, and the flat rides had long lines. We retreated to the relative calm of the back side of the park. This required a trip across the Darn Bridge. We spotted trains moving on the steel coasters first, so we headed to Chang.

The line for Chang extended down the stairs and to the start of the queue house, but none of the switchbacks were open. In fact the line did not seem to take a long time, maybe 20-30 minutes. We were then locked into row 3. Right during loading I was disturbed by a rider who wanted to safely stow their CD player which mean t my getting out of the train, stowing the item, jumping back in the train,, fighting with the seatbelt, and finally getting secure just at CLICK the height adjust thing locked with the seat horn up a little higher into my crotch than I would have liked. The ride dispatched. Well I didn't think about the pain in my legs, which amazingly I did not get again this week. In fact Chang seems to be running very good this year.

We then passed by the closed Chaos, and headed into a near walk on T^2. Surprisingly T^2 was running two trains, which meant a fast moving line. We were able to get two rides before the crowd found it. I also noticed something. The ride in one of the trains was quite smooth, in the back seat even, the ride in the other train was the Hang N Bang experience that made this ride infamous.

We decided to head on down around the big circle walkway. We passed Blizzard River, a ride I have never ridden because it is either closed or has an obnoxious line when I am here. Today, like Monday it was closed. We eventually wound ourselves around past the giant slot car track to Twisted Twins.

We took a ride in each twin, yes both sides were operating, and as ususal were walk ons. They were okay rides, but nothing like Thunder Run.

We headed to Thunder Run. The line started just at the bottom of the stairs, so it wasn't too long, maybe 20 minutes until I was in seat 1.2, the same seat I rode in on Monday. I got about the same near ejector air as Monday. Thunder Run lived up to its reputation as a great coaster. Too bad the line looked a lot longer when we walked down the exit ramp.

We skipped Rollerskater, and were not surprised to see the Vekoma Lawn Ornament they call "Quake" to be closed. We then took some photos and went to see how life was at the other side of the darn bridge.

Still crowded, the line for Hellevator was a bit longer than we wanted to endure, the flat ride lines were long, the Wild Mouse line was all the way through its unadjustable queue maze. We found ourselves heading to the still closed Greezed Lightning. We spent a long time chatting with Rob and Chuck, and assorted other coaster enthusiasts. We watched how much of a fascination the foot massage chairs were next to the greazed lightning entrance. We spent so much time waiting I got bored enough to figure out the foot massagers were 25 cents per minute. Jerry and I ate some of largest Snow Cones on earth. They run $4, but they will keep any snow cone lover happy for a long time. We waited as we got numerous reports that it would be just a few more minutes, We watched a mechanic beat the ride into submission with a large hammer, and finally about two hours later, at 3:45 it finally opened. We were able to get two rides in before the crowds started to show up. So we waited for 2 hours, but no one felt like waiting in one of the long slow lines for one of the rides in the front half of the park, and the walk to the coasters in the back half of the park would be just too long to walk all the way out there and back. We got one ride near the back, and one ride in the very back seat. Anton has a winner here, but it was still not running reliably. No problem the mechanic would just go beat on something with a large hammer. I thought I was watching RCT!

As we rode the second time, we noted the Wild Mouse (Roadrunner Express) was now a walk on. So instead of enduring the line for Greaed Lightning again, we rode the Wild Mouse. Besides the Fastlane people were making quite a few sales to coaster enthusiasts who probably burned whole books of fastlane coupons on GL.

We rode RoadRunner Express, Jerry got his 117th coaster credit. We then decided it was high time to leave SFKK and head down to Holiday World. Which, of course is the subject for a different trip report.

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David Bowers
Mayor, Coasterville