West Mifflin, Pennsylvania – Friday, June 6th, 2008
The first ride of our second evening at Kennywood ended up being the Cosmic Chaos. I’m not completely certain why; it was fairly new and on our way to the bigger coasters so we just said “why not?” The 50’s sci-fi theme seems like a reasonably good fit for the park but I wish they could have been a bit more clever with the visual appearance besides the same ‘cartoon aliens’ you see at every other small park with a space themed ride. It was also probably the longest I’ll ever bother to wait for a Zamperla Disk’O again, even though it was only about ten minutes. The outward facing seating is still a bit awkward when mixed with the centrifugal force but sometimes it works better for me than others. This was thankfully one of the better experiences.
If there is a spinning ride in Kennywood I have nothing but good things to say, it would have to be the Exterminator, the 1999 Reverchon-built indoor spinning wild mouse coaster. Part of the brilliance of this attraction is that it’s not simply a dark ride themed to mutant sewer rats run amok, it’s a dark ride themed to dark rides themed to mutant sewer rats run amok. The stylized gags throughout the ride building suggest a meta-awareness
of the important roll dark-ride conventions have played throughout the history of the American theme park experience. It also uses the traditional wild mouse layout to outstanding success as it changes first from the traditional dark ride section (pre-lift, lift and switchbacks) to the traditional roller coaster thrills section (the main drops, including the jolting double-up after the main drop obscured by total darkness), and then stirring the whole pot together with the crazed spin-cycle switchback and bunny-hop finale with a trip through the steaming boiler room. I can’t tell if it’s just being in the dark or if there really is a difference in the lubrication of the spinning mechanism, but I also swear that I always get the fastest spinning on this version. If there’s only one thing I don’t care for it’s the capacity, which can sometimes result in slow-moving queues
of over
an hour length (though thankfully not the case today).
Other rides in the Lost Kennywood area we tried included the Pitt Fall, one of the earlier Intamin 2nd Generation drop towers that has a good location overlooking the ravine to the Monongahela River making it feel taller than it really is, and the Swing Shot, a 32-passenger S&S Screamin’ Swing that I wish was rather called the Pittsburgh Pendulum. (That name won the voting contest, why did Kennywood choose to ignore it completely and go with their own choice instead?) I know some people are huge fans of these swinging pendulum rides by S&S but I myself must admit to being rather lukewarm towards them,
possibly because I find the ride cycle is too short. Kennywood’s version had at least two full swings in both directions more than Cedar Point’s larger version, which compensates for the smaller scale. I like being able to look up at the peak of the arc and see the world upside-down, something that didn’t work quite as well on the 32-seat version as it does on the 40-seat version I’m used to.
The entire Lost Kennywood section of the park, opened in 1996 on the site of a former parking lot and designed to recall the original Electric Parks and White Cities of the turn of the century, is probably one of my favorite designs for a themed area of all time. The meta-themeing is not an attempt to mask anything; instead it’s simply the resurrection of an architectural style
that still holds much of the same aesthetic resonance to this day. That said part of me feels it doesn’t quite live up to the full potential. I think the architecture is a little too scattered between modern rides to create a fully cohesive visual impression, and lighting and water features could be updated to the 21st century so they have the same dazzle to them they would have had to original early 20th century visitors.
It’s hard to spend too much time in Lost Kennywood anyway when the entrances to the Thunderbolt and Phantom’s Revenge are just a stone’s throw away. Thunderbolt has long filled out my list of top five favorite wooden coasters, a choice that might have seemed reasonable were this 1985, but in the era of CCI, GCI, Gravity Group and Intamin plug-n-plays might seem a little strange.
Part of it is just that I like the feel and character of ‘classic’ wooden coasters, especially when Art-Deco rolling stock with zero seat dividers, seat belts and single-position lap bars are still part of the equation.
What makes Kennywood’s Thunderbolt better than the rest is the presence of possibly the most powerful and clearest delineated layout progressions of any wooden coaster ever built. From the opening Miller-designed steep drops in the ravine section, it completely morphs into a new ride at the top of the lift with Vettle’s midway bowl which knows only two types of rider experiences: laterals, and heavy laterals. It then quickly shifts back into the first mode of steep, straight ravine drops to close out the ride, the “1-2-1” progression being both one of the simplest
but also most effective layout schemes devisable. What really makes the Thunderbolt kick however is the fact that nearly every drop is larger than the one preceding it, creating a kinetic flow that generates excitement as the ride progresses rather than starting out strong and then gradually losing it as most modern coasters tend to do. Sure, there might be bigger and faster rides out there, but not even the gigacoasters are able to have a nearly 100 foot drop as their concluding statement. That final drop on the Thunderbolt still leaves me breathless and wanting more every time.
Is the ironic tragedy of Kennywood that even with a coaster as good as the Thunderbolt,
there is still another attraction that I find I need to devote even more time to? Clearly I speak of the Phantom’s Revenge, a coaster that deserves a much deeper individual analysis than this particular trip report can provide, so I’ll just quickly go over why I give it a rock solid #3 ranking in my best steel coasters list. The first two drop with the second diving 232 feet down the side of a ravine always strikes me as the most boldly
creative
layout configuration ever implemented in a hyper/mega/giga-coaster. Also, like the Thunderbolt, there’s a great dual-identity to the ride experience that keeps it fresh and interesting to the end. Unsurprisingly, both are the hybrid from two separate designers separated by a decade or more.
The first half is only about tremendous speed and power (as well as the stunning
terrain use, of course), the wind in the front rows so intense it rips tears from my eyes in a way that not even a front row Millennium Force ride
is able to do. (Possibly due to some aerodynamic feature of the fiberglass nose?) There’s then a very pronounced ‘lull’ in the middle of the layout as the track circles the outside of the Turtle where one might reasonably assume that, removed of the terrain element and reduced
to less than half its top speed, the best of the Phantom is over. It very quickly slaps that notion right out of your head when the train violently yanks you out of your seat twice in less than two seconds with the start of the explosive ejector airtime second-half. If there’s only one part of the Phantom that doesn’t quite feel right it’s the final turnaround, which is flat and messes up the lightning pacing that the second half should be all about. If they could even just enclose that in a tunnel with special effects then I think there would be little question that the Phantom’s Revenge
rivals or exceeds any similar mega-coaster designs from Intamin or B&M.
Kennywood was open an hour later than the previous weekend due to the extra Friday weekend traffic, so after getting our fill of Thunderbolt and Phantom’s Revenge in the dark, we went back around and spent the last half hour getting a few laps on the Racer. I wanted to get some more on the Jack Rabbit as well, but found that they had closed it fifteen minutes early (even though the wait was no more than five minutes long) so that everyone would be out of the park gates by 11:00pm. I find this sort of closure policy annoying, as unless the queues are ridiculously long I like knowing when, to the second, I will or will not be able to join a queue to make my last ride of the night. Oh well… I most certainly will be back for more before too long.
Comments