Carowinds, NC

Total Timber Tour 2 Blog Day 7

Hi all.

With the BP oil crisis and Americans boycotting BP service stations here, we’re a bit worried they’ll find out we’re British so for that reason we’ve decided cut the trip short and return before it gets worse.

Only joking! We’re just telling everyone we’re from Australia!

So today was the last of the new Hyper/Semi-hyper/Giga Coasters for us on the trip and a very hot (low 90’s) and humid day (read lethargic) at Carowinds.

The reason for adding this one to the trip was Intimidator. Only similar in name to yesterday’s and very similar to those from earlier in the week. So how was this one? Much better than yesterdays but spoilt a bit by a very aggressive trim brake on the return run. When stood in the car park taking photos and video, the brake sounded more like a station brake than a trim and removed any chance of airtime over the next 2 hills. The first drop (235 feet) and second drop (unique twisting design) were good, but the remainder quite uneventful. Lacking the finales of the Canadian and Ohio sisters meant it didn’t find its way to the top of our list for the week.

So now our new Hyper/Semi-hyper/Giga Coaster rating for the week looks like this - Behemoth 1st, Goliath 2nd, Intimidator 3rd, Diamond Back 4th and Intimidator 305 5th.

What about the remainder of the park? Well, we got to Intimidator before the crowds with our passes but, although the park became quite busy, there was never more than a 10-minute wait for anything, with some rides being “walk-on” again. They were keeping everyone alive with free water at any stand because of the heat and the staff seemed happy enough, despite the working conditions. Another park that didn’t race it’s racing woodie.

On the flip side though, we did encounter some strange operating policies on Intimidator only. In the morning they allowed riders to join the front seat queue pen if they wanted to ride there. This stopped in the afternoon because “it was too busy and everyone wants to ride there”. So what – if they don’t mind the additional wait, let them! But it was no more busy then than the remainder of the day. What did guest services say – “it’s nothing to do with us – this is determined by the ride manufacturer”. Go figure.

Then there was the single rider queue. With about 20 people waiting in a separate line for those all important odd seats the queue manager was pairing up odd number parties from the regular line to make 2’s and 4’s meaning the single riders weren’t getting a look in.

It must be said however that Carowinds did realise that Intimidator was their big draw for this season and ran the ride to capacity with 3 trains all day – quite a contrast to yesterday’s one-train operation.

So a full-on week with some big parks, long drives and not much sleep. Tomorrow, we slow things down a little and start on some smaller parks. This is also where the road trip from East to West officially begins.

Until tomorrow....