I rode the thing Friday evening. Still a pretty awful excuse for a flume ride. I had the boat...in fact I had the ride...all to myself. No way the ride was making its nut when the crew outnumbers the riders by about 5:1.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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My friend and I rode it 2 weeks ago on a wednesday, when no one else was riding, really. They let us stay on a few times, and we saw another boat with 3 or 4 people on it maybe once.
We experienced a weird issue where we hit the bottom of the second lift, and we stopped on the tires, but the tires were clearly spinning and slipping under the boat. We didn't advance forward until the other boat came by and rear-eded us, which knocked us forward and onto the chain.
I know this wasn't just for us, because the boat behind us immediately stopped on the tires, and when we came around again, there was another one on there that we wound up rear ending. I wonder if there wasn't enough weight in the boats to cause the right amount of friction on the tire drive, but it seems a little odd to have to wait to be rear ended onto the lift.
I wonder if they shouldn't just file this crap pile into the category of something Dick Kinzel did while he was senile and rectify it ASAP as they finally did with Disaster Transport. The $10 million they spent on it is gone - it's a sunken cost. Beyond the first year, they were never going to get that back anyway. It wasn't really a marketable ride to begin with. The height requirement is too high for a flume ride. It rarely runs. No one loves it. It's had an "incident." The list goes on.
Use the real estate for something else or a new flume that actually works.
-Matt
I only got to ride it in 2010 but it was a decide ride. You got wet and took a nice relaxing boat ride. Unfortunately, it often felt lethargically slow. It wasn't anything that you couldn't get from Thunder Canyon or Snake River Falls. Personally, I wouldn't miss it due to the issues Intamin's been having between STR and Giraffica.
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