Trip Report: Kennywood featuring Steel Curtain

[Gazza]

A couple of months ago I visited Kennywood, which is an old park in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh itself is a very unique city, built around a river and crammed into valleys, so it is quite hilly and spread out. One minute youre in a built up area, the next you're in woodlands.

Parkz Database Entry:

https://www.parkz.com.au/parks/US/West_Mifflin/Kennywood_Park/

Full sequence of 331 photos....Use your arrows:

The captions go into extra detail in parts.

https://www.parkz.com.au/photo/19912-Kennywood_Scenery/gallery/sort/newest/location/park-288-Kennywood_Park/offset/0

Kennywood is built up on top of a steep ridge above the river, so the park is fairly flat, but drops off at the edge and several rides make good use of that!

The main entrance is separate to the rest of the park, and you pass through a tunnel to reach the park proper.
The park is here and there, some parts are quite old and vintage, other parts are newish, so in some ways it probably shares similarities with places like Blackpool or Hersheypark. They don't nickname it Kennyweird for nothing. Maintenance could be better in some parts.
It's an enjoyable park, with no bad coasters at all, add to that an impressive set of modern flat rides, some special vintage ones, a couple of ok dark rides, and good kids areas, and you have a decent package.

 

As for the rides:

Steel Curtain
The big new one, a 9 looper with the height of a hypercoaster and an overbearing support structure. Some questionable efficiency though, they didnt open it till more than half an hour after opening, due to an exclusive event, so trains were going out half empty whilst crowds began to snake down the midway, which is bullshit, they should run exclusive events earlier in the morning.
Eventually you get to the station, pretty basic with some football themed banners. I did like the saftety annoucements done by commentators, "we dont want any objects going offside, so leave em in the locker room", stuff like that.
The brakes and station boosters are slow AF and the lift is louder than Green Lantern. But all is forgotten once you are on the ride, with a wild first drop that twists about, and 8 subsequent inversions taken at a bullet like pace. The main downfall of the ride is that it vibrates the whole way. There's no roughness, the trackwork is spot on and curves gracefully, but I think Kennywood ordered the sybian version from S&S for something.

 

 

 

Sky Rocket
Had fully expected to miss this one, it was down all last season due to a rooted LSM system, but miraculously reopened a couple of weeks before my visit.
Have yet to ride a premier launch coaster i didnt like, and this was quite good, you roll into a launch, up and over a top hat, cutback, and overbank turn, before coming into a midcourse brake and down a small vertical drop like at the start of Abyss. From here on though it becomes a bit like motocoaster, with a sluggish pace....s bends, some gentle hills and one more corkscrew. I can see what they were trying to do with that gimmicky vertical drop, but it knocks off too much speed imo.

 

 

Exterminator
This is a standard Reverchon spinning coaster like the one you rode at the Show/Ekka, but with extensive theming as if you are in the sewers/underground substations of a city.
The queue takes place through several tunnels, and the main part of the ride has the lift hill enclosed by a sewer tunnel, which opens out into a big shed a bit like the main room of scooby, however the two levels of switchbacks are separated by a layer of canvas, i guess to hide the 2nd half of the ride? The highlight is the two big drops, and turn betwen them, which is enclosed by its own little room with an overheating boiler in it.

 

Thunderbolt
What a cool wooden coaster. You have to ride in pairs, and with good reason, during the ride are a couple of ground hugging turns taken at full speed without banking, so you get squashed sideways.
The ride starts off with a drop out of the station into a valley, turnaround, and another drop, before coming up a lift. next it basically does this big double helix esque thing around a midway area, with the afformentioned unbanked turns. Once you get out of that part it goes back around another set of drops and turns in the valley parallel to the set at the start of the ride. Awesome fun, and a great example of preservation.

Phantoms Revenge
Another good suprise, It's standard 90s hypercoaster at the start, focusing more on drops than the airtime (the tops of the hills are a bit slow and flat). The 1st drop is curved, up in the flat part of kennywood, but the 2nd drop goes off the ridge, ducking under thunderbolt in the first place, going crazy fast. A big fan curve brings you back up to ground level, before you drop down the face of the hill again, and come back up a second time. The rest of the ride has smaller hills and turns, yet the train is carrying heaps of speed. So they could have done a couple more big hills, instead it just blitzes through the last bit of the course at a billion miles an hour with some intense airtime on the humps, taken at what i would call an irresponsible speed.

Turtle

I thought the cars spun on this but they don't. It's just a boneless powered coaster really, and a bit slow.

Jack Rabbit
This one was ok, its the more family oriented woodie, with a formula of drop turn drop turn etc. This one also crosses over a valley, so bits of the track are just built straight onto the ground at some points.

Lil Phantom
A cute little family coaster with no queue.

Racer. 
Two sides on this one so I rode each side. I love racing coasters, so even though the ride itself feels run of the mill, the way you can stick your hand out and high 5 other riders, and the sense of gaining on and falling back relative to the other train adds to the value of it. The station is gorgeous.
I still reckon Grand National edges it out if we are talking mobius wooden coasters.

Garfields Nightmare.
A dark boat ride and A bit meh, and seemingly designed by an IP bitch rather than someone who understands dark rides. It was basically a number of UV lit scenes of Garfields nightmares, things like the goldfish going feral, mice overtaking the house, food items eating HIM and so on. Interspersed were sets of poster sized 3 panel garfield comic strips they had picked out that vaguely supported the story line.

You had the option of wearing chromavision 3d glasses, which make everything appear to hover off the walls.

Ghostwood Estate
Fairly typical haunted house themed shooting dark ride, that is, you just go through a few mansion rooms, with lots of cobwebs, dark ligting and so forth. The ride was maybe lacking in practical effects, so allthough the rooms looked pretty (No UV flats here!) they perhaps lacked energy.

Kangaroo
This was fun. It's a spinning ride, perhaps the closest comparison would be your music express/matterhorn/rock n roll rebel type things. But instead of running around a wavy track, its a flat track, but with a single jump at one point, so the cars actually become airborne and then land back on the ground track, with a air dampener under the chassis providing a soft landing.

Bayern Kurve
Never done one of these. Again felt similar to a matterhorn, just a fair bit faster, with a chain of cars racing around a circular track. Powered coaster on steroids basically.
Journey with Thomas
Mostly rode this one to get some pics of other rides. It loops around the nicely done Thomas Town themed area (Wonder why no Aussie parks have done a Thomas themed ride or area yet?) before it runs along a straight section with several billboards themed around Thomas the Tank engine and the various additional characters that have been introduced.

Whip
An enthusiastic operator on this one, which treated the cars like horses in a race, commentating like a machine gun and encouraging riders to raise their hands and scream.
This ride is rectangular, with a chain of cars running around a pulley at each end (imagine like how a chairlift works). Your car runs beside the pulley, so the whole ride you are alternating between going along the straight, with no laterals, and then whipping around the pulley, with strong lateral forces, so there is a bit of repetive anticipation going on.
It's interesting how a lot of old school flats relied on one little gimmick, whereas newer flats seem to be about piling various ride motions on top of each other.

Ill conclude this with a few other pics of the wide variety of things on offer at Kennywood.

 

 

[Jobe]

Great trip report Gazza, as always!! Kennywood is on my bucket list of parks to visit, due to its mix of heritage and old time feel and new world thrills!! I am happy to see a trip report from someone that I trust stack up to my expectations!! 

Had to laugh at your description of the Turtle ( old time Tumblebug- made by Traver engineering) I rode the example at Blackpool years ago- it has since been removed. I do believe that there are no more than 2 surviving Tumblebug rides left- the Kennywood example and one at Conneaut Lake Park. There are none left outside of mainland US with the demise of the Pleasure beach example- a tragedy as it was destined to be gifted to Margate park for its reopening but it never occured. Its whereabouts is unknown, most probably scrapped.

Similarly,the Whip is also from the same timeframe and also a rare ride as well. Once again, the only example I have ridden was at Blackpool but it has also since been removed to whereabouts unknown. Examples of both of these rides were found at Sydney's Luna Park until the early 70's.

I would be keen to ride a Bayern Kurve again. I was surprised to see that you hadnt ridden one before- you must have missed the Wizards Fury at Wonderland before they removed it. Again another example of a rare ride being looked after.

Really want to ride one of those Kangaroo rides- there seem to to be quite a few examples of these in the US and from your description, they sound well worth the effort

The coasters look excellent- something for everybody. I am most interested in riding the vintage woodies but also Phantoms Revenge. Its got an interesting backstory and its great to see that from its troubled beginnings, a decent coaster emerged.

What was the atmosphere like at the park? Was it busy the day that you went?

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

11 hours ago, Gazza said:

Bayern Kurve
Never done one of these. Again felt similar to a matterhorn, just a fair bit faster, with a chain of cars racing around a circular track. Powered coaster on steroids basically.

I too am surprised you'd never gotten to ride Wizard's fury, although judging by the picture, I feel like Wizard's may have been on a steeper incline?

Probably just my imagination though - Wizard's was built a bit higher off the ground, and unlike Kennywood's example, the inside of the curve was a drop off with nothing inside of it. The headchopper moments through the house were also a plus.

Did they run Bayern Kurve backwards as well as forwards? (Something Wonderland used to do back in the day, but stopped in later years, probably both for safety and efficiency).

A great TR as always Gazza. Wish we got more of those on the boards...

[Gazza]

What year did Wizards Fury disappear?

I only went to WL once, about 4 months before it closed.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

The ride had suffered severe rust, and was shut down around 2001. It was subsequently removed, and I think Galleon's Graveyard (Captain Caveman's Clippers) was relocated from HBL to the wizard's pad for the final years. Wizard's was directly opposite the wave swinger Dragon's Flight, in the shadow of the Demon.

[Wil_i_am_not]

We actually have a 'Kangaroo' model over here in Aus, technically a travelling model but only appears once a year at the annual Bell's carnival in Batemans bay (around a 4 hour drive from Sydney). It's definitely worth the trek out, they're fantastic rides and a whole lot of fun. I believe it's 1 of 2 original Bartlett's Flying Coaster units left in the world, with the other being the Kennywood Kangaroo.