Onwards.
After Dollywood I took a bit of a rest day in Knoxville, drove a bit of the blue ridge parkway, and stayed the night in Asheville.
But the following day it was only another couple of hours in the car to reach Charlotte in North Carolina for Carowinds.
http://www.parkz.com.au/parks/US/Charlotte/Carowinds/
The park is another one of the ex paramount properties, and much of the original IPs in the place were taken away in the transition to Cedar Fair ownership. The parks occupy a strange space…Mostly “amusement park” in feel, but with themed rides mixed in.
But as I said, all that theming is gone now, so it’s very much your big US park with big coasters and all the other expected attractions.
In typical Cedar Fair style, the park is tidy and well presented, the operations are painless, and the food is fairly good.
I spent $125 on their all inclusive ticket, which includes admission, all day dining, fastlane, parking, and an unlimited refill bottle. It’s a good deal, but I probably did my dough a bit because fastlane was utterly unneeded, with no real queues, and also because I left my bottle in a toilet somewhere late in the afternoon so didn’t quite drink “all day”. No queues is a great problem to have!
The park has recently redone their entrance to incorporate the new Fury 325 coaster over and under it, with new buildings similar in style and colour to the new entrance Cedar Point got for gatekeeper.
I started off on Intimidator, thinking I’d do the smaller B&M hyper before doing the big one for fear of being jaded if I did the big one irst, but the ride managed to do that itself anyway. It just wasn’t very good, and battles with Apollos Chariot for being a bland B&M hyper (Though Apollos Chariot probably wins between the two due to the nicer setting it has) . Basically it seemed to labour over the hills, particularly at the end before the helix, with minimal airtime, the long train was sluggish to pick up speed, so there wasn’t that pulse pounding excitement you should get. I’m not sure what went wrong with this one, because the other cedar fair hypers, and Goliath at SFOG are all really solid rides.
Next up I did Nighthawk, a Vekoma flying coaster. I’d really enjoyed the ones of these I’d ridden at SF America and Kings Island, very smooth exciting coasters. This one was the original, with the main difference being the final inversions are corkscrews rather than inline twists. Hate to be negative a 2nd time in a row, but this one was very rough, which you just can’t have when riding strapped in a flying position. Once was enough!
I think at the time I grabbed a quick go on Flying Ace Aerial Chase because it had no queue, was right there, and wasn’t included on fast track. It’s a family suspended coaster. We’ve all been on Escape from Madagascar? Yes? Great, don’t need to describe it then.
The weather was clear, so took the chance to go up Carolina Skytower and get some nice aerial shots of the park. Seems not many riders by that point, so the windows were nice and clean.
So after that brief procrastination was the superb Fury 325. This B&M giga coaster is the newest in the park, delivering a very long, and fairly intense ride compared to every other B&M hyper, and a bit more punch than Leviathan at Canadas Wonderland.
The station is “flavoured” rather than themed like all the newer stuff Cedar Fair is doing, with hexagonal motifs to suit the hornet theme, and a rather impressive 3d sign with flickering hornet wings formed with lights.
The huge, steep first drop leads into a series of multiple side banked turns across the park that weave over and under each other. It’s all very fast, with so much wind you can just about do the “dog with flappy cheeks out the car window” thing. The turnaround is a curved incline meets Stengel dive type thing, with sideways airtime at the top (I think the only other rides ive gotten that is the new texas giant) More sideways turns follow, as well as a drop under the park entrance bridge.
The ride has three airtime hills, which actually seem to get into proper negative G territory rather than just floating over the top, and they twist a bit too. Feels very intamin, and a great finish to the ride.
There’s also a big helix too, which was cool because it goes under another support right on the borderline of the clearance envelope, so feels like your hand could strike the column.
I also liked how they had a screen in the station showing how fast the crews were working in terms of dispatch intervals etc. Seemed to help crews work quickly / encourage them to do so.
After a couple of laps on fury in the front and back I moved onto Ricochet. A wild mouse coaster with an efficient continuously loading station. The station building looked really nice too, and fitted with the Boardwalk theme of the area.
Following from this I worked through the three “Carolina” named coasters in the park.
Carolina Cobra is a Vekoma Boomerang. Not much to say here other than it was better than most due to having the same trains Dreamworld has on sidewinder, so no headbanging. This is probably the only time where the fastlane queue was longer than the main queue. Basically when I arrived they let through a whole trainload of normal riders which emptied the queue, and took none from the fastlane side, so we waited an extra cycle. Totally inconsequential of course, because the whole queue was so quiet there was only one train worth in the first place, but more funny than anything.
Carolina Cyclone is an Arrow loopscrew, and I think the “next model up” from what sea viper was. Basically there’s 2 loops in a row at the start, and a helix at the end after the corkscrew instead of just a U turn. Like most arrows of its time, its not at all a bad ride.
Carolina Goldrusher is a mine train. If you’ve read my trip reports, you probably know I don’t think much of them. This one wasn’t particularly offensive, but wasn’t that long either.
Next I did Boo Blasters on Boo Hill for whatever reason. “Cardboard Cutout” sets and frustrating to hit targets made this more booring than boo.
The other shooting attraction, Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 3Z was much more fun. The bright queue with a fun centrepiece of caravans for the zombie and plant team set the tone well, as did the well produced instructional video before you go in.
Once inside, you sit on a bucking mechanical bull type seat (albeit only gentle rocking) equipped with a laser gun. Holding the gun in one hand and hanging on with the other. Rows and rows of these face onto a a screen that basically is just a 3d run through of a level in the game. But its very fast paced so you have to work pretty hard to hit targets, and this is made challenging because your crosshairs are like one among 24 on the screen, so keeping an eye on where you are shooting can be like a needle in a haystack.
I continued around the park to Afterburn, the parks B&M inverted coaster. This is the 2nd best coaster after Fury 325 in the park IMO. Heaps of sustained speed, a cool near miss as you do a floater hill over the station, and the last bit with the corkscrew and helix through trees is nice.
Basically it’s a steep drop into a big loop, then you blaze along a trench in the ground, do an immelmann, zero g, then around a batwing element that actually drops under the parks secondary entrance path. A floater hill, helix, and tight corkscrew round out the ride. Did about three laps, and liked the front best.
Having completed a lap of the park, I got a serve of my beloved orange chicken from panda express, then started a bit of a 2nd lap, trying out Vortex and Hurler.
Hurler is a wooden coaster with a unique layout, basically it’s a big long oval shape, with a lift, u turn and drop being the main high point in the ride. From there, everything is low to the ground, with a few smaller hills. Because the scale of these is much shorter than the main first drop, you get good speed and air, but its also pretty rough too.
Vortex I liked. It’s a B&M stand up coaster with a couple of inversions and lots of “in between” turns and slalom transitions that make stand up coasters good.
The last remaining coaster was Woodstock Express…one of those small wooden coasters like Beastie. A pleasing ride that was well maintained.
I did another lap on Intimidator, trying the back this time. Still uninspiring.
The weather turned a bit bad so I took cover in Harmony Hall, which is basically like a german food fall, with a food court type thing like what you see at a Stadiums / Ikea (Basically go up to counters and get food on a tray, then pay at a checkout) Using the dining pass I got some ribs. Had about half and binned the rest. They were good, but just don’t have the capacity to eat so much! I actually really like this sort of arrangement and wish more parks did them, comfortable and out of the weather, and you dont have to muck around looking for different food options, and having plated dishes is a bit more satisfying. They tend to be high capacity too so you get served fast.
When the weather cleared I headed into Carolina Harbor. The main aim for going in was to ride the “turbo tunnel” type slides. A slide type I have wanted to try for ages, but the closest I’ve gotten would be the Wedgie. Consider it a $17 upcharge though, ouch!
No trap door here on Storm Surge though, just endless spirals in the dark that toss you around and feel super quick. It’s the most insane slide I’ve done. Not painful, but it does instill a bit of fear because of how fast and dark and relentless it is. Did a couple of goes.
On the other side of the waterpark are the Pirates Plank slides. Again, these are like the wedgie, but with extra turns, and three of them. I think the green one was the most intense, less turns and steeper. So much unavoidable water I was holding my breath for the length of the slide.
On the same complex was Cannonball drop, which was a few enclosed turns, finishing off with a double dip drop like on the breakers at WnW Syd. The main thing of note was that the tunnel had those translucent “rainbow rings”. They are a cool feature, but the effect would be so much more if the whole slide was made out of those segments.
I didnt really try the other slides because they are standard ones I have ridden before (though in hindsight should have reacquainted myself with the TornadoWAVE slide they have (ridden in single tubes rather than cloverleafs like Bombora at WnW Syd)
I think that sums up what I did in the park. It was a quiet day, so managed to get through everything fairly quickly. Ieft the park for about three hours to take a break, but came back in the evening to do night rides on Fury, which are cool because of the illumination on the ride and in the tunnel.
Overall, Carowinds is a decent park, albeit suffering from that generic feel you get at places like Dorney Park, but Fury, Afterburn and Vortex are pretty cool, and the other secondary coasters aren’t too bad either.
I would have liked to have checked out charlotte for a day, but had to settle for just a drive through downtown around 9pm and heading to bed for an early flight.
Dont forget there are heaps of pics of every other ride in the gallery
http://www.parkz.com.au/search/photos/location/park-189-Carowinds