Yesterday was a great start of the season for Knoebels. Unlike past years, it did not rain on opening day, and in fact was absolutely beautiful out.
Just some quick highlights:
My first ride of the season was on the Flyers, where at the end of the cycle I scared myself witless by almost hanging the Flyer. The cable caught the back and sent me spinning for a brief moment. Scared the heck out of me, but it was fun. Lots of folks were hanging around at that moment, so if anyone actually got a photo of that (I know there were a few cameras out) can you pass it along to me, I would love to know exactly what happened there.
Twister was running very well, not quite as fast as the end of last season, but pretty good through the helix and had nice pops of air at the top of the second hill and the top of the helix.
Pheonix was running OK. Plenty of airtime as usual, but there was a nasty little pothole at the bottom of the first drop.
Looper had a long line all day. They really picked a winner there, folks seem to love the ride.
The Flying Turns are starting to take shape. When you see it in person, you can see just how much work there is to be done, it is going to take a while. I talked to Lenard Adams for some time, and he explain alot of what is going into the construction of the ride, and gave us an overview of what the ride will look like. Also he said the ride will go right out to the midway and infact jut out into it a bit. Many of the trees that were there before are also staying put, they really took out only stuff that was dead. The ride will come very, very close to some of those trees. The trains are being designed, they are going to try and creat a restraint system similar to that on the Mack bobsleds, with the T-bar. They are afraid, though, that the insurance may make them go with OTSR's because of the closeness of the structure, but they are trying to avoid that if they can.
Here are some shots of the construction:
Dick explains how the layers of the coaster are constructed.
Here the third layer still has to be installed.
An information booth with construction photos, the track plan, and photos of some of the old rides has been set up.
The rest can be found here:
http://cyclonic.smugmug.com/gallery/1412760