Monday, May 14

My first trip of the season started out late due to some circumstance out of my control,we didn't arrive at the park until about noon.

On the bright side of getting there late, there was no line at the season pass center and we were in and out with our passes in about fifteen minutes.

There were more people there than I though there would be since schools are still in session, but I figure that there were class trips and such which accounted for the large amount of high school looking kids. By no means would I say that it was crowded however.

First ride of the day was Raptor which ended up only having about a half an hour wait. I applaud the crew who though still getting the hang of it, moved people through rather quickly. The ride seemed faster to me, partciularly after the brake run, but it could just be because it was the first ride of the season. I was pretty dissappointed in the on-ride video as well. I didn't plan to purchase one but would have like to at least see it. It took a long time for the preview to even load, it feels like they show too much of if or something. We ended up leaving before ours even came up due to a large crowd gathering in the area.

We then headed back to Skyhawk after watching a few launches of TTD. Skyhawk's line was only about 20 minutes but right as we were to enter the ride, the harnesses got stuck shut and we had to wait for maitenence to come unlock them. We decided to wait and it only ended up being another 15 minutes or so. The ride was down again around 5:00 for other reasons. We waited around about 30-45 minutes for it to get fixed.

Waited less than an hour for Millenium, kind of wishing that the parents of the middle-school aged boys in front of us would have stayed with their kids...But the ride on Millenium was amazing. I never get enough of that ride.

Headed back to the car for a late lunch hitting the Iron Dragon and the Sky Ride.

Ended up not getting as many rides in after 5:00 as we had hoped. Even though many people were leaving, the rides we wanted went down. Magnum was still down, Gemini had unusually long lines due to only one side running, TTD was down, Skyhawk had downtime and Raptor was closed when we ended up back at the front around 6:30.

Overall, the trip was pretty good. I understand that many of the rides have these technical problems early in the season, so I didn't let it bother me too much. We still had a great time riding what we did and just walking around. We even got to see a few trains go on Maverick, which just made my day!

The park was a lot more crowded than than the first Monday of the season usually is, but I have a feeling that opening a week later than the previous couple years made a difference.

Downtime did seem to plague quite a few rides, but nothing stayed closed for very long. I saw Raptor go up and down a couple times, Demon Drop had some issues, Magnum had to take off a train, TTD was closed for most of the evening (reopening right before the park closed), and that's all I really saw.

As for Skyhawk. The ride seemed to me like it was work a little better than last year. The load/unload times are still lengthy, but it seemed better. I got 4 rides in a row right before closing.

I also thought that the load/unload times on Skyhawk were quicker this year. The crew is already doing a good job with that. I thought Joshua's enthusiasm for the ride was great. It really adds to the experience when the crew gets into their jobs.

I'm also guessing that next week the crowds will be down. Right now is prime class trip time. Once the end of the semester gets nearer, they aren't able to take the day off. I saw two or three different physics groups there, I'm guessing they are overflow from Thursday, they came thinking it would be less busy than Physics Day, which is usually packed. This even has really gained popularity even since I was in school.

I went Monday and thought MF was the worst ride i've ever had. I rode in the back seat of the Yellow Train and the thing was as rough as Mean Streak. I'm not sure if there was a bad wheel on the train, or if I don't remember it from the last time I rode in 2005.

Gomez: Demon Drops issues were related to the wind. It got stuck between the lift and drop form the wind and the empty cars got stuck on the flat part before returning to the station due to the wind.

AT: TTD opened at around 6:30 and they kept the line open until 8:00 for anyone in the park still :)

^I was in line for Sky Ride when the mechanics were actually pushing a car into the drop position on Demon Drop. It was very interesting to watch.

Yea, I stuck around to watch it and watch from the Queue as they did it. :)

AT: TTD opened at around 6:30 and they kept the line open until 8:00 for anyone in the park still :)

That really sucks! We walked by at about ten after and figured since it'd been down all afternoon it would be down the whole night! Should have stuck around I guess.