| My first ever ride on KK!
Yesterday as we drove up to the park, I was with a group of people who never saw KK, so seeing it was pretty amazing to them. I was with a friend, his mom, and an exchange student from Spain, who upon seeing GASM, said "Dragon Kahn" because of the identical color scheme, but then I explained to him that it's more like Medusa than that. We got into the park at 9:45, waited a while, and then we heard the "5 4 3 2 1, the park is open." There was already a large crowd getting through the boardwalk, so running would be unnecessary, so we just walked over to the GK, to be stopped at the entrance of KK. Then they let us in and we piled into the queue line and got up to the switchbacks. Then the ride didn't open for an hour, so we waited in the same spot for an hour. They began teasing us with a train, moving it back and fourth on the track, positioning it wherever. Eventually they launched the trains, twice each, and after 8 launches, the ride was running. We got from the switchbaks to the station in 15 minutes, but since we wanted to do other rides that day also, and we planned to leave the park kindof early, we would only be riding this once, so we waited another hour and a half for the front. I was on the left side of the station, front train (green), front row, on the right, with my friend's mom sitting next to me. The train got onto the launch track, we hear the horn, see the brakes go, fall backward onto the pulley mechanism, and get locked. And then we're waiting, and it really does seem to take a long time to launch. And then a pull, and we're off. The launch was very impressive. I did not realize how powerful it is, how fast 128 really is. I had my hands up the whole ride, but I wasn't yelling, my jaw was just dropped because I was so surprised by how cool the launch is. We pulled up into the tophat, and we were at the top really quickly. I don't really remember going up that much, but then cresting the tophat, I saw everything. It was so high up, it reminded me of looking out the window of a plane, so high up, wow. Then we were facing vertically down, seeing the coolest looking twist ever. This I remember very well. The twist down was cool, the world was spinning around me, but the drop was not as intense as Xcelerator, although obviously much longer. Then into the bunny hill, not really much air on that, a little bit of floater, and then the brakes, with a very smooth stop. and back into the station. In the last 20 seconds I had traveled over 3000 feet, what a rush. I dot out of the train, and then my friend and the other kid got in the train, and meanwhile we went over to look at pictures in the booth. Then we saw the green train get onto the launch track, that was them. A minute later we met them at the picture booth, and we had all conquered Kingda Ka.
Next we went over to Medusa, and it was cool. We got some middle row, and it was a great ride. Really fun this year IMO. We skipped all bordwalk rides because they weren't worht our time, which we didn't have much of. It was 1:30 when we got off Medusa, because although the wait was short, we took a long time to go from KK to Medusa, because some of us got hungry, thirsty, etc. and we had only ridden two rides at that point. We went to Stuntman by request from our Spanish friend, but I felt bad that in Port Avventura they got that new tower and all we had was this. After Stuntman we went on Batman, It's a much better ride in back row than in front, you don't get as dizzy. Then it was time, finally, to go on Nitro. It was running two train, but it was as fast as three train because they run three train pretty slow anyway. So after about 25 minutes we got the second row, and it was a cool ride, better than last time I went on, but not nearly as good as AC. The air does not compare!! Ooo that rhymes.
We decided to go on Congo Rapids, forget what the reasoning was, but we went anyway. After the raft left the station, we were off. First they were shooting the water cannons, got some other people, then through rapids and waves and all that, everybody on the boat got wet except my group of four. Then two of us got wet, but not me and my friend who wast next to me. Then we were heading back to the lift and everybody on the boat was angry that we didn't get wet. And then some random water jet shot directly at us, and everybody on the boat was cheering. It hurt me on the inside, oh yes it did.
Last we wanted to ride the Chiller (Only Robin open like usual). It was already 6, but we really wanted too, so we got a half hour for the back car. It was a good ride, cool, fun launch, but not intense, especially not after KK. It was a fun ride, but I noticed on the return, coming out of the cobra roll, all of the cars in fron of use were shaking side to side, yet the ride was still smooth. It was odd.
Anyway, good day at the park, I'm glad I got to ride Kingda Ka, well worth the wait for the front. And It was my 70th roller coaster. Not much, but I'm proud of it.
Last edited by meowcoaster1; 08-11-2005 at 10:26 AM..
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