Saturday, Aug 31 - Top Thrill Monster

Arrive at park around 3:00 PM to less than the expected crowd. Bonus. Check daughter's height, 48" yet? nope. On to Iron Dragon. She loved the view from the front seat Go again, shorter line now? Nope.

Train ride back to Frontierland, daughter talks about the cool ride it would be if the train went up Millennium Force's hill, followed by longing gazes at the tracks for Maverick. She tries out seat for Maverick and talks about how she wants the rewards listed on the Maverick's "Wanted" poster. Skyhawk still valiantly hanging on in its fight to remain dead. Then off to Camp Snoopy for awhile. Check her height at Gemini, nope, still not 48".

Waiting to ride the monster, slightly annoyed because they are only using eight of the cars for the ride. Why? They have a healthy line. Ride operator (wish I had gotten his name) kept referring to it as "Top Thrill Monster."

He had reason to. I have been riding that (model of) ride since the late seventies. I have NEVER had such an awesome, thrilling, enjoyable ride on the Monster as I did yesterday! Don't know who taught him how to operate the ride, but he should be teaching everyone else. I really wanted to ride it again, but my offspring is loath to ride the same thing twice in a row.

So if you see a slightly overweight blonde young man running the monster and calling it "Top Thrill Monster" take the time out to have a spin on it.

For Monster if you use all arms, it's a capacity nightmare, two arm is a good efficiency. You can switch to four arms but the cross checks required on the ride do slow operations down still, thus cranking out two arm you can somewhat control the crowd.

I think every monster crew has always used Top Thrill Monster...I thought I was original but nooo :P

Also, we do get to control the ride a bit...but I doubt he was doing anything special..generally what I did was switch on eccentric, start rotation, safety spiel, and then after the top rotation gets one rotation, both levers to max, don't touch for the minute cycle. I never really did anything special to the cycle honestly

Have to say he was doing something different. As I said, I've been riding the monster for years, and never had a ride like that before - not even the other six times I rode it this season.

Earlier in the season they were loading 16 cars and running the ride cycle.

They did run the ride backwards this weekend, as they have every now and then in the past just to try it out...

16 cars is ok (thats 4 arm operation, not 8)

Backwards, really? What does that mean exactly? Does it rotate counter-clockwise instead of clockwise?

The slow load times tend to turn me off with these rides, but the actual ride is always a good one.

The ride normally rotates counter clockwise, reverse is counter clockwise. So instead of pushing rotation & eccentric forward, they pulled them back..

Was a pretty fun ride

Funny you mention that because I've noticed at other parks the cars on the Monsters rotate a lot more which adds to the fun. However, on a recent ride at CP the operator gave it a crazy stop which made us spin and it was quite fun!