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i had a lot of fun with this thing. its impossible to dislike a ride like this - its got more heart stuffed into its dense little frame than id think GCI would ever do after riding ROAR and LR. but more than anything it gave me hope in the future of the modern compact twister layout. at the top of my coaster fantasy list (a long enough list) is this vision, a simple dream- one morning a designer from GCI is going to wake up with a wild hair, put his undershorts on backwards, get into his car through the trunk, and use the left turn signal for every right turn he makes on the way to work. THEN, hes going to eat a whole tin of altoids, make himself a cup of coffee the consistency of roofing tar, sharpen all his pencils with his teeth, boot up his computer using a hand-cranked AC generator he had been keeping in the basement for the apocalypse, and design the perfect, devil-may-care, raunchy, tight, clautrophobic, fast, MFing twister woody to top all twister woodies. i may be a dreamer, but i think its possible...KY rumbler is not this ride, but its the sweetest GCI ive been on since wildcat, and its a much better overall ride and design than wildcat, though not nearly the intensity. after disappointing rides on a few modern twisters ive kinda felt that perhaps the genre was best left to the hand-drawn old timers who made them fast and sick because they didnt have a computer talking over their shoulder like HAL from 2001 - "Hello sir, that transition you just designed will be a very uncomfortable combination of laterl G forces and negative G forces. Please change it immediately or this program will do a forced quit." frankly, the relatively low speeds of a compact twister need to capitalize on STRONG forces, and a generous variety of those STRONG forces or else they will be dull. a great small wood coaster should also capitalize on its own structure to create illusions of dangerous speed and pending doom. throw in a little vibratory energy to create an uneasy mistrust in a coasters structural integrity. not quite achieving this devilish lunacy, GCI and KYrumbler still win out because, while not very intense per se, this coasters certainly got speed, tons of energy, a little bit of noisy track "rumble", nice lats, a few surprises, and even a healthy bit of serious floating airtime (yo, what took you so long GCI!). the first drop, with the wicked speedy turnaround into the strange, mangled dip is a gorgeous floater air event complete with a death defying head chopper. that drop gets this ride off to a righteous start. everyone knows that GCI is the master of the layout and this coaster is no different. its a hell of a design, bent, beautiful and all gorgeous timber 100%! the trains look great, like a cross between an antique fire truck and a millipede, diving and scrambling around the convoluted course. when i first saw the coaster from my car, after driving down a road that looked like someones driveway, it hovered over the horizon like a wooden emerald city which should have had "surrender hrry" hanging over it in the sky. the coaster is an escher-like impossibility in that setting, surrounded by green hills and farms. i enjoyed the ride immensely from my first ride, and i had about 9 rides total, in various seats. but something happened that killed my buzz for KYrumbler. i went up the road later in the day and got on the raven at HW. for airtime and intensity, raven stuck it to me and put the little rumbler into clearer view. small woodens can be far more intense than what GCI seems to be willing to show us. fast, fun, and packed with eventful elements these GCI twisters, but just not "whoa, holy sh*t!" on the brake run. come on GCI dudes, one of ya, cut loose and give me a mind blower...please!
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