Shoot the Rapids?

No, I didn't want to hold up my friends the last couple trips. They wanted to ride the bigger rides like Maverick and Skyhawk.

Come on, just tell us it was down whenever you went to ride it. 😉

RCMAC said:

I'll be interested to hear from our samosuband to see how much time he actually spends at STR, especially in the spring.

Now that STR is closed for the year, throughout the whole summer there was about 8 days total that I wasn't there, and none of them were because of the ride.

That load /dispatch cycle is brutal. How many more boats "should" be on the circuit? Having to wait for that 2nd boat to come back from the island while two boats sit waiting and ready in the station is crazy. It seems like one cycle isnt bad, then the very next one is extremely long waiting on that 2nd boat to return to the station before the other two can leave.

What should've been a simple high capacity log ride....and they get ...THAT!

The ride was designed to run with 10 boats, but the majority of the season we ran with 7 or 8. When we ran with 8 the intervals were more even, as they came back in the same groups they were dispatched in. It was when we had 7 that it was unveven, cause you'd have the boat that previously left from load 2 in waiting and the first one of the next dispatch would be the second one.

Having ridden this ride a number of times with my friends and family I would say it was a fun experience overall. Ofcourse all those days it was not very busy so I may not have noticed issues with Loading.

I still remember on Gatekeeper ride night, I rode Shoot the Rapids like 5 straight times. It's too bad it was rainy that day, but looking back it was still fun! Maybe next year, I can go for 10 straight.

AFAIK Shoot the Rapids was designed to run faster than it does - the press release says 3 minutes, but they always announce that it is 6 minutes long.

Why is the center row of StR permanently disabled? Is it to keep boats under the weight limit (1750lbs?)

Yes, I believe it is for the weight limit.

STR has a nice layout, it's too bad the mechanical system is over engineered.

Its seems like it could be a very fun ride if it worked right.

Would it be that difficult for them to redo the mechanical system using the existing layout?

Or maybe there are other factors at play: Maybe not financially feasible or is there existing legal action from the initial install?

GigaG said:
Why is the center row of StR permanently disabled? Is it to keep boats under the weight limit (1750lbs?)

Yes, middle row is closed for weight reasons. It's easiest to keep the boats balanced using the front and back two rows.

Yet something that shouldn't have to be done if a ride were to be designed correctly...

Oh, darn. StR already has quite bad capacity. I wonder if they'll ever "fix" it yet again...

The ride has a lot of potential, other features could've been worked into the course. Maybe part dark ride on the island portion of the ride. The stream enters a building with an artificial rock exterior, with exciting scenes on the inside before exiting to climb the second lift.

If they were going to update STR with a themed/dark ride section, that would be an opportunity to work on re-engineering the ride to run better. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I agree that probably nothing will change with STR. If a dark ride is constructed in the next few years, it would be neat to have passengers riding in boats down a channel similar to Pirates of the Caribbean.

But, are you stapled in your seat on Pirates of the Caribbean?

I'm referring to an entirely separate ride, not altering STR. If a dark ride is in the works, make the boats similar to Snake River Falls, but not getting you wet. Would be cool to see the boats go down a small hill at the end of the ride without getting the riders wet.