So how do you top Stark Raven Mad?
Well, you don't. But that's Ok, I enjoyed this day anyway.
I'd never been to Kentucky Kingdom, so instead of staying at Holiday World for part of the day, then heading over to KK later, I chose to spend the entire day at KK. Some may argue that this was a mistake, but I enjoyed myself. Would I have had more fun at HW? Possibly. Was KK perfect? Not by a long shot. But was it BAD? No.
The drive from Santa Claus, Indiana, back to Louisville was rather uneventful. Since it was early Saturday morning, instead of rush hour Thursday night, the traffic was MUCH easier to deal with once I hit the city. After checking into my hotel (the Executive West Hotel), and having an excellent late breakfast/brunch at the Tea Room in the hotel, it was off to the SFKK.
First impressions weren't all that great. The park seemed somewhat crowded, and I wasn't thrilled with the layout -- this park is divided by a road, with a single pedestrian bridge connecting the two sides. However, with the exception of the park's wildmouse (Roadrunner Express), the coasters are all on one side of the park.
The rides, in order of first lap:
Roadrunner Express (2 laps) -- A nice little wildmouse. Capacity on wildmice can always be a problem, but the crew on this ride kept things moving at a pretty good pace.
Roller Skater (1 lap) -- Junior coaster, got it for the count.
Thunder Run (1 lap during the day, 4 more during the ERT) -- The hilight of the day. Very nice coaster, especially in the ejector seat -- I was completely out of my seat during the entire drop on a few of the smaller hills. I hadn't heard much about this ride, but I loved it, especially during the ERT.
Twisted Sisters (6 laps each on Lola and Stella) -- So, which side is which? I THINK Green is Stella if I understand correctly, but I didn't see any signs indicating that. As best as I could determine, Green is a back seat ride, Pink is a front seater. Unfortunately, I didn't know that for my first ride. I went to the front of Green, and wasn't impressed. THIS was a CCI?!? As the day went on, though, both sides warmed up, and I discovered what seats I preferred. Neither can touch the Holiday World shrines, but both turned out to be pretty good rides. They do need some serious maintenance work -- lots of squealing from the G-trains, and I noted weeds growing all over the place.
Chang (2 laps) -- This ride is everything Mantis should be. No trim on the first drop, intense but fun. I haven't ridden many standups, but this is probably my favorite.
T2 (1 lap) -- Ouch. Another Vekoma hang-n-bang. Rode it for the track record. Unfortunately, due to not planning ahead of time, I realized afterwards that I'd made this abomination my 90th coaster (if you count Twisted Sisters as 2, which I do since they have rather different layouts). Ah well, at least it wasn't #100...
This was my first visit to Kentucky Kingdom. I won't go out of my way to come back, but I won't avoid it in the future if I'm headed that way either. I had a good time, and if I hadn't gone right after SRM (a VERY tough act to follow) I'd have probably been even happier.
At least it was better than PKI, but that's another writeup...
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--Greg
http://www.pobox.com/~gregleg/
*** This post was edited by GregLeg on 5/14/2001. ***
