Well, I was finally able to ride Griffon on Friday. It was hardly a "sneak peak", basically everyone in the park was at Griffon pretty much all day. The line maintained pretty long (1 hourish), though the single rider line really helped. Security was EVERYWHERE, I guess because there are several areas that were prone to line jumping. The "French Village" isn't exactly what I thought it would be, the only two buildings there are the partial queue/station and on-ride photo booth/locker room. But, scenery is unimportant IMO, so that didn't bother me any. I also noticed that instead of a button the ride-ops use a new finger-pad to "clear" the train. It also uses both magnetic and standard "clamp" brakes.
Also, the floor drops a little different than the standard floorless (it doesn't tilt when it drops). Griffon's drops vertically down several feet, moves over to the side, and then drops down some more. A small piece on the front drops forwards at a slight angle and pretty much rests on the box-beam. But, there is a section of floor that is permanently attached (the yellow floor in the first attached picture) to the train. The retractable floor comes up for 4 seats on each side, the two in the middle are above the permanent section.
Good: The drop under the bridge is great (btw, the on-ride camera is attached to the bridge) The water splash is amazing, it looks so much bigger than SheiKra's. It also drenches part of the track (so if your on the very end you get slightly wet when you pass back under that portion). It is probably the smoothest or second smoothest coaster I've ever ridden (except for a little piece of bad track-work towards the end, but your going pretty slow by that point so it doesn't really do anything).
Bad: There isn't anything about the ride that is bad except the piece of bad track that I mentioned earlier. But, the single rider line is completely unorganized. This one guy would randomly close it because it was "too long" and then not reopen it forever (even when the single-line was nearly empty). Yeah, lets close the normal line because its too long, I also think the trains are too full, so lets take one of them off too
. It really didn't make any sense as to what they were trying to accomplish there, and no one could explain to me what they were accomplishing either. Then, on a later shift, the single-line was filled up, so I guess it may just be this one misinformed employee.
Overall: IMO, Griffon blew SheiKra away, mostly because of the drop under the bridge (instead of just out in the open like SheiKra's), as well as the second immelmann (instead of just a small turn like SheiKra). The small hill after the second immelmann gets some great airtime as well. The front and back rows are the best, with either side seat on those rows being the best. I still think Apollo is the overall best in the park though, but just by a little.
And thats my review of Griffon
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Linear Mode
