SFKK- day 3 of the SRM trip

Sir Willow · #1 06-06-2002, 05:00 PM

Once again this is pretty much copied from the post I made to the Roller Coaster Talk email list that I'm a member of. So if some of it sounds a bit funny, that's why. Anyways, here goes:

SFKk- Friday, May 31st
The people- Me, Jon Z, Brian (AFLAC!), and Josh
Weather- partially cloudy and very humid.
Crowds- very light. Almost everything was a walk on.
Scoring- I'm still using the now familiar 1-10 scale with 0's being
really bad and
negatives meaning "taer is down now!"

Jon and I arrived before Josh and Brian. We took time to get his season
pass processed, then hopped in line so I could get a quick ride on
Hellavator, the Intiman second generation giant drop right near the
entrance to the park. I dunno why, but I prefer the S&S drop rides
(like Supreme Scream at Knotts and Power Tower at CP) to these. Maybe
it's the more dropping for you buck bit. I know some really like this
because of how close it is to the ground when it stops, but I like the
generally higher towers of the S&S ones. Interesting note- they were
only running 3 of the 6 cars when we were on, and one of those 3 shut
down later.

After this the others still hadn't arrived, so we headed over to the
other side of the park, having to cross a long bridge that is the sole
access to where most of the rides are since a road cuts accross the
park. Since I've started already, let me describe the park a little
bit. SFKK is part of the Louisville, KY fairgrounds, and as such has
cheap parking ($2!) but a very strange layout. I'm guessing that it's
free to fairgoers when the fair is in session, but when it's not, it's a
small park, and the division of the two sides makes for a walk to get
from one part to the other. Kind of a pain.

However, the park did look very neat and clean overall. The people were
a different story- both guests and employees. Apathy was very common,
as was lots of slow, strung out drawled speech and comments that would
be considered strange, or even dumb, in other parts of the country (more
on that througout). If this is some people's idea of what Six Flags is
I can understand why they aren't to keen on the chain. But I can also
say that it was far from typical of the chain as a whole, and had me
thinking that there is more independance among the parks in the chain
than people think.

Anyways, back to the rides. Jon and I headed over to Chang, and since
he's riden before and had a sore leg he decided to take a seat while I
rode. I headed up and got a nice front seat ride, hopped off and
realized that Josh and Brian had arrived. So I grabbed Brian and headed
up for a second ride on Chang. Chang became my second favorite standup
coaster- not up to the level of Riddlers, but far better than the heap
called Mantis. There was one small spot with a moment of banging, but
overall I found Chang to be a lot of fun, even when the guy next to me
on ride one was shouting, "I didn't know dat dese here roller coaster
thingies made you stand up when yer goin upside down". Chang gets a
very respectable 7 from me.

From here all 4 of us got together and followed our tour guides long,
circuitous, winding route to get over to ThunderRun. Why do the hide
the entrance for this inside of the coaster and close off one of the
access routes to it? Plus the sign for the entrance is actually inside
the exit. Makes it nearly impossible to figure out how to get on it.
But once we did, we were able to ride what was easily the best coaster
in the park several times. Thunder Run is a Dinn/ Summers featuring one
train, a 78 foot drop into a turn and several airtime pops throughout.
TR is a blast of ride and we hit it a few times, inspite of the slow
ops that looked more interested in naps than running their coaster.
Scored an easy 8.

Side note on crowd: while in line at Thunder Run I overheard one of the
guys behind me commenting to whoever he was with, "Well, lezz see now,
we're here in line for this here coaster number 73 on de map." and I
couldn't help but think "where are the other 72 coasters in the park?
And he can't figure out the name?". Ahh, sorry, just me popping off
about what I know and they don't. Maybe I should have told them that it
looked like it was running pretty fast compared to how it usually runs.
[;-)] (those are jokes. really)

We then took a walk over to the Rollerskater, a typical model built over
a small creekbed/ ditch. A pretty view but it's to bad they didn't make
some use of the terrain instead of having so many high concrete pillars
to attach the supports to. But the drop looks really high for a kids
coaster. Still, it gets a typical roller skater 4- great for kids, but
not so much for adults. [:-)]

We also walked around a carousel that Adam Sandy would be proud of.
Absolutely gorgeous in its pavilion and featuring lots of unique
animals (only a few horses), 2 "teacups" that spin througout, and 2
bobsleds that rock. Hopefully I can get my pictures scanned and
uploaded this week, because it was a work of art. We also walked by
their Shoot the Chutes ride (Mile High Falls) that made one of the
hugest splashes I have ever seen on these things. Their plexiglass
booth on the bridge was a rather interesting site to see also.

Then it was time to start the torture runs. We made our way to the
Twisted Sisters/ Twins/ Clones/ or whatever we're going to call it this
time. I'm not sure if it was a good thing or not, but both Lola and
Stella were running and scratching their way through the "dueling"
courses (3 passes doesn't equal dueling in my book) in their Gerstlauer
trains. This would be my first experience with these kinds of trains,
and after riding in them I can see why people don't like them. I'm just
going to group both sides together as they seemed to give pretty
equivalent rides, even though there is some differences. The courses
were slow, bumpy, rough, and the trains uncomfortable, as if they were
ill suited for actually coasting. I really wonder how much improved
these would be with PTC's, but I'm sure they would be improved. And
while PTC's might not look as "stylish", they also wouldn't look as
cheap and would be a lot more comfortable. As it is, both sides score a
3- not something that I'd go back and ride again, but happy that I rode
them. But definately not what I would expect from CCI.

Jon and I then agreed to ride together on T2, since it would be my first
experience with an SLC in this part of the country. T2 was also the
first Vekoma SLC built in the US, and as such features a slightly
different layout than the other models. For some reason, it also only
has 7 cars seating a grand total of 14 people when most others seat 20.
Anyone know why this one only has 7 cars? There's easily room in the
station where they could add more.

After riding this one, I can easily understand why some call these "hang
and bang"s. Thankfully there is some very soft padding for the ears
now, so it doesn't hurt, but it definately bangs it way through the
course. It's a pity to, because I really like the unique inversion that
are on the SLC's and the interesting layouts. If only there was a way
to make them smoother. At least I've gotten good rides on the one at
SFMW. But T2 scores a 2.

From here we took a round on their Giant wheel where I was taking
pictures and the other guys were admiring the "scenery" on the nearby
wave pool/ beach area, then we walked back across the
lllooooonnnnnngggggg bridge and around over to the last coaster of the
day- Road Runner Express. This is a Maurer-Sohne Wild mouse with a
pretty typical layout minus the drop after the top level switchbacks
(instead its got a little bunny hop) and a couple of very hard brake
grabs on the lower dips and drops. I have yet to find a place that is
willing to run their mouse flat out like DCA does with their
Mulholland's Madness, and this, like the others, is a pale shadow of
what MM is. Sadly without that drop and with the brakes it wasn't even
all that fun, and rated only about a 4 or 5 on my little scale.

Josh and I then closed out our run at SFKK with a ride on the
Breakdance. Let me just say that SFKK runs this wide open and this ride
is completely nuts. I've been on a couple of other versions of it, and
they don't hold a candle to the way they run this here. If all parks
ran theirs this way, this would easily be one of my favorite flat rides.
So SFKK gets a few points here.

We ran into Jeremy and Nate coming in the park as we were leaving, and
agreed to meet up with them at Holiday World that night for Stark Raven
Mad, loaded up the cars, and were on our way.

CLOSING COMMENTS

SFKK was an interesting experience for me. It's got a lot of coasters
for a small park, but only a couple that I really enjoyed and would like
to ride again. But I'm not sure that I would want to go back just for
those coasters. The staffing was generally slow, disinterested, and
showed little effort to do their jobs efficiently (though there were a
couple of exceptions to that).

And the layout of the park was a real pain, but I won't go into that any
more since I already did. The biggest thing that would help this park
would be to get better staff, but based on what I saw coming through the
park I'm not sure how possible that is and am afraid that SF is doing
the best they can under the circumstances. It's going to be very
intersting to see what happens with this park in the future, and if SF
ever has to ditch parks for solvency reasons I can easily see this one
being one of the first to go.

birdie311 · #2 06-06-2002, 07:23 PM

Ya, when we went last week the people there were very interesting. I'm, from Tennessee, so I can't speak much, but they make the way I talk look like a british accent. Also, there aren't many atrractive people there as you said. I hate that bridge too, it gets crowded on a busy day, plus it's a pain. The park's laid out kinda screwy too. Several tight walkways with tall fences.