Edited on 7/25/04: its a great coaster and after much deliberation have changed my rating from a 9 to a 10. I initially had it as a 9 due to the inconsistency of the rides.
On 5/23/04 I rode it for the first time, make that 8 times. It was overcast and chilly so the park wasnt crowded at all. If I had stopped after 3 rides (front, back, middle) this rating would have been a 7 or 8. I really was not totally impressed. The airtime wasnt great (it bounced through some of the hills) and it didnt feel that out of control except for that last left turn out by the Sky Ride when I was in the back seat. But thats the dynamics of a woodie, every ride is a little different. Sometimes they have bad days, this one had a bad afternoon. But later in the day the coaster got better. I rode it five more times and all those rides were 9s or 10s. The best ride was when I was in the middle of the train with no one next to me and no one in the seats behind me in the same car. Lots of airtime on that ride. Id like to give props to Derrick, by far the most amusing/entertaining ride operator Ive ever encountered. Funny thing happened on my last ride, we got on the train at 7:45 (park closed at 8PM) but pulling at of the station it felt like we ran over somebody. Maintainence (Steve, Tom and Rob) came over and tried to get the ride started. The car didnt catch on the lift hill and we started sliding back to the station. The guys climbed under the train and couldnt get it fixed immediately. They kicked everyone off the platform and promised to get us our ride. I joked with the maintainence guys and said "what are you gonna do push us up the hill", he said "yep". With the help of 8 guys the rolled us back to the station gave us a running push and we snagged the lift chain and we were off. It took about twenty minutes so we ended up being the last ride of the day.
|