Knoebels Flying Turns Update and Trip Report

On Sunday, May 27^th 2012 I visited Knoebels amusement park in Elysburg, PA. Knoebels grove is an old fashioned amusement park with a very relaxed atmosphere and some of the most classic rides around. This was the second stop on out tour of Pennsylvania after riding Skyrush at HersheyPark. Some of Knoebels rides and park favorites include the carousel where you can collect rings (one of only a few left in the country). 

 

Knoebels Haunted House is also a must ride on your visit. The Haunted House is consistently ranked as one of the best of its type in the world. As with all the Knoebels attractions, it’s a classic, old school ride full of great gags that made me jump despite riding it before. Warning: it is a very loud ride.

The million dollar question all theme park fans are dying to know the answer to is what’s the status on Knoebels Flying Turns? Construction started in 2006 and the ride has never opened to the general public (anyone know if park officials have ever taken a quick ride down the chute?). It appears they are waiting on a new car chassis to arrive to continue testing. The brake run and transfer track has actually been completely removed. Lift hill number has been modified too. I hope the Flying Turns Knoebels opens in my life time.

 I also had a chance to ride Knoebels Black Diamond, a new/old ride relocated from New Jersey (then called the Golden Nugget I believe) and given an updated control system. Black Diamond is technically a roller coaster as it relies solely on gravity after being pulled to the top of the third floor by multiple chain lifts. I have to admit I was very surprised at the number and quality of the show scenes inside the building. Bravo Knoebels – a job well done!

Pictured below is the 2012 Knoebels park map.

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Cedar Point 2013 Coaster

The Sandusky Register is reporting that Cedar Point will remove the Space Spiral observation ride and the Disaster Transport indoor roller coaster in order to make room for a B&M wing rider roller coaster to open in 2013. According to the newspaper, a memo dated February 15, 2012 from Cedar Fair CEO Matt Ouimet sent to Cedar Fair's board of directors claims the new 2013 roller coaster will be the tallest, fastest, and longest wing coaster in the world when it opens next year. Details at this point are thin but we do know the lift hill will rise 170 feet in the air and the ride will most likely be an out and back style design (think Wild Eagle as opposed to X-Flight). The front entrance to the park and parking lot will also be upgraded.

Cedar Point has not made an official announcement about the new ride but did confirm they will be investing $25 million into the park next year. Cedar Point's 2013 ride will keep their roller coaster count at 16 (was 17 then will drop to 15 after removing Wildcat and Disaster Transport and will return to 16 after new ride is built). After going years without removing a major coaster, Matt Ouimet has already signed the death warrants for two roller coasters not even a full year into his new job.

While this is great news for Cedar Point fanboys and roller coaster enthusiasts, families who like to visit the park and ride together have to be groaning. The park is once again removing family friendly attractions and not replacing them with something suitable. Though the Disaster Transport buiding has been an eyesore for years, the Space Spiral is an iconic structure at Cedar Point. While this makes me sad, I can't wait to see the Cedar Point 2013 roller coaster blueprints and layout.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates on Cedar Point's 2013 coaster.

And in other exciting Ohio news, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium are building a huge expansion for the 2014 season. Safari Africa will include giraffe feeding, camel rides, and a new zipline experience. Read more about Columbus Zoo 2014 Safari Africa at Zoo Tails blog.

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Skyrush Review: Intamin gets it right

I want to preface this by saying I only rode once in a middle seat in the back row and didn’t have to wait in a long, hot line. Skyrush is one of the 12 roller coasters at Hershey park. Where is Hershey park? Hershey park location (HersheyPark) is in Hershey, Pennsylvania, not far from Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania. Skyrush is easily the best roller coasters in Hershey park, if not the best in America.     

No, it’s not a perfect ride. The Stengel dive is actually quite boring, it’s short for a 200 foot coaster, and lacks a climatic ending (at least from the back seat it felt like it just ran out of gas after the last airtime hill). That being said, the airtime is very intense and the first drop is one of the best anywhere (due to it's three parts: flung over the top, 85 degree, curved bottom).

One of the reasons I liked the ride so much was because Intamin finally fixed their horrible restraint design. They actually modeled something after the kings of comfort, B&M. Now we get the best of both worlds – B&M comfort with Intamin airtime. Gotta love it!

I can't comment on the operations since I only rode it once during the sneak preview Friday night but watching the ride from a distance on Saturday I could tell dispatches were horribly slow. Many of the Hershey park coasters are operationally slow (I’m looking at you Fahrenheit).

How do I rank Skyrush against other roller coasters? Well, it’s really hard for me to say. For example, I hold Apollo’s Chariot very highly in my mind but I rode it over ten years ago. Thus, I have a hard time ranking coasters. Compared to Wild Eagle at Dollywood, which I rode earlier, Skyrush easily takes best new ride of 2012. While Wild Eagle is fun and unique Skyrush is extreme and intense. If you like airtime you have to get on this ride (before the public complains it's too intense and they add more trims to slow it down).

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New Thrills Connect Ad in AAA Magazine

Cedar Point (and Cedar Fair for that matter) are rolling out a new marketing campaign this year called Thrills Connect (which I detailed in an earlier post). I saw one of these new "emotion over promotion" ads today in AAA's magazine, Home and Away. In case you can't read it the white text says "If kids are going to wake you early, rides should be involved."

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Wing Coaster Design

We're just now seeing an onslaught of new wing coaster designs opening this year with four of them from B&M (including the fabulous Wild Eagle at Dollywood). There have been wing coaster design concepts around for a long time. Check out this airplane concept from 2007. This design is a literal wing coaster as the seats are on the sings of an airplane.

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Your Upcoming Flight...

Well look what came in the mail today...

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2012 Amusement Park Ticket Price Per Coaster

There are a lot of variables that go into amusement park entrance ticket pricing but from the viewpoint of a roller coaster enthusiast – someone only going to the park to ride the coasters – might look at the ticket price as cost per coaster. I decided to do a little quick research and proceeded to go to a few amusement park web sites to see what their one day ticket price at the gate is and then went to RCDB to confirm how many roller coasters they have. I charted out the results shown above (I use Excel spreadsheets a lot).

A few interesting notes from my research:

• Six Flags has an affiliate program with 5% commission for selling park tickets. Very smart. Why don’t more parks do this (or maybe they do and I've never heard about it before?)
• Six Flags has one of the harder websites to find out how to buy tickets while Kings Island was by far the easiest.
• Holiday World has the highest cost per coaster while Cedar Point has the lowest.
• I omitted the heavily themed parks such as Disney and Universal for obvious reasons (extremely high cost per coaster).
• Lagoon Park seems to be pretty good value as it's the same price as Holiday World but offers 5 more coasters. That is until you actually see the roller coasters that they do have to offer.

Of course this is just all fun and games as I stated to begin with there are many other factors which go into ticket prices like what other perks are included - water parks, parking, soft drinks, world class shows, etc. At the same time, those folks complaining about how expensive Cedar Point is need to realize that Cedar Point is very affordable compared to other parks as well as alternative forms of entertainment.

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