TR: Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (5/31/09)
Trip Report: Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom
May 31, 2009
Louisville, KY
We decide sitting in single lane slow moving traffic on I-64 was not our idea of a fun time, and tried US 60. US 60 was moving about 60mph, and it runs pretty much directly to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (SFKK). Just after crossing the border into Kentucky, we found an IGA selling gas about 20 cents a gallon cheaper than the stations near Holiday World. Score!
We made our way to Kentucky Kingdom and make a stop on the way at Steak and Shake. Between the late check out, the time change, the drive to Kentucky Kingdom, and the lunch we didn't get to the park until almost 3pm. As we drove through Lousiville, we did note the firemen having one of their "Fill the Boot" fundraisers, which is not bad in and of itself, but when they park fire engines in the middle of the street with the lights flashing to draw attention to it, there should be a law. We were passing through right as some emergency vehicles with actual emergencies were having trouble getting through since people were ignoring the flashing lights after seeing the firetrucks being used as props.
Why do we do this to ourselves? It seems like our Kentucky Kingdom visits always come right after Holiday World visits, so maybe I'm not being all that fair to Kentucky Kingdom. We pull into the parking lot and get hit with a $6 parking fee. One one hand its one of the lowest parking fees in the Six Flags organization, on the other its the first reminder we're not in Indiana anymore. So we give the state fair $6 to park on the fairgrounds then drive through the center of Kentucky Kingdom to the big lot in the middle of the fairgrounds. We drive up and down the aisles and my this lot looks busy, but who is to say what cars are there for the park, and what cars are there for other activities. We pull into the lot to the right of the main gate and find a parking space just a few feet from the entrance plaza.
We head to the ticket booths, and we see the employees in their new tennis ball green shirts. They do stand out, and they remind me of the shirts worn by employees at big sporting venues. We head to the one open ticket booth and look over our options. Rideman is set to buy the $55 season pass as he will be heading to SFMM in June, I have no such plans and note the one day ticket is $30. The park is also running a special, where you can get a 6 visit SFKK only pass for $30, and there is a chance I might get back here this season. I purchase the $30 Big Six pass, and the ticket seller hands me a voucher printed by the register and then proceeds to block out the section where you are supposed to fill in your information to register your pass. They direct Rideman to Guest Relations as he might get a lower pass price as he was renewing a 2008 pass. Unfortunately, when he got to Guest Relations he got the news that since his 2008 pass was isssud from Great Advenutre, he is not eligible for the renewal discount, but hey at least the ticket seller tried. We then quickly entered the park and passed though metal detection. I note that at peak times they have arrangements for "No Bags" lines and a seperate season pass gate.
We enter the park and head to the season pass processing center,yes I had to get a pass card for my Big Six pass. The line was just out the door and soon we were inside.You first head to a room where they have a bank of computers. You scan your voucher, then you do all your own data entry for the pass registration. I wonder why they don't just install a camera and printer at each terminal and completlely automate the process. After you enter your data the screen tells you to take your vocuher to the next room. In the next room they have the room devided into season pass processing and Big Six Processing, that way the workers don't have to worry about which passcard blank they are putting into the printer. We go to seperate halves of the room where agents take our vouchers, scan them, they take our photos, and the same person hands us our passes. We pocket our passes and head into the park.
We walk past the games midway and I get my first dose of the "More Flags = More Fun" tagline. "Watching the Game = 3 flags on the fun meter, Playing the game - 6 flags" We head to the Himalayah, and after watching one cycle we board the ride. We proceed to sit there as it takes about 10 minutes to get the Himalayah loaded and checked. We are rewarded for our patience with a slow moving ride. The operator though, seemed to be auditioning for the role of carney ride operator "Want to go faster, let me hear you scream!" "Want to go backwards?" It does neither of those things.
We exit the Himalayah and walk right onto the Enterprise just as it is being loaded, what timing. Its a fast spinning Enterprise which still goes completely vertical, which seems to be a rare thing for these rides anymore. I was a bit concerned with the amount of lateral shaking the ride was doing, but Rideman didn't seem all that concerend.
Next, we go to ride the Rainbow, or that was we were going to ride the Rainbow, but it seems it, like the Hellevator has been removed. The Rainbow does appear on the park map, but is not listed in the list of rides, last minute scratch, perhaps? Our next ride was Greezed Lightning, this coaster was a walk on as well, even for the back seat. Its a fast ride, you get launched forward, go through a loop, up the spike, back through the loop, through the station, up the back spike, and then down into the station. The good news is on the backwards trip through the station the were merely trimming the train rather than trying to stop it, so back seat riders get treated to that unqiue backwards airtime. We exit the ride and I start to notice something really annoying, the park has decided that any segment of fence that borders a ride must have a large "Danger" sign affixed to it. Yes, I have read about the incidents, and know exaclty why the park, or the parks lawyers, insisted on their presence, but after the first few its just overkill. I think some of my favorites were the "Danger: High Voltage Area" surrounding a gasoline powered Antique car ride, or Danger signs around the outside of the carousel railing, and one Danger sign placed right next to the entrance to the Rollerskater.
From there its to the Road Runner Express, which was using the short path to the station. The line was just to the bottom of the stairs, and we witnessed what might be the best ride crew in the park. The station can hold four cars, they had one car unloading (thanks to the lap bars releasing automatically), two cars loading, and then one car in the holding position waiting to be dispatched onto the chain as soon as the computer says it is okay. Unlike the rest of the park, this is the model of proper ride operation. This, of course, means this crew will be the crew that gets into trouble. We get sent to a car with just the two of us, so we each take a bench and they allow us to sit in the middle straddling the T shaped lap bar. This pays off in spades ot on the course as it was a lot more comfortable in the hairpin turns. All in all, I had a much better experience on this ride than usual.
We next head down a long windy path past the Skycoaster (marked down to $15, sorry I don't fly for over $5), a Rio Grande mini train ride. The Rio Grande is a powered train ride, and was sporting the High Voltage signs, Rideman tells me the voltage involved to move that train is an alarmingly high 110 volts. We pass a disused games area that now sports a single vending machine inside a large empty area, and head back to Bluebeard's Bounty, the Pirat ride.
We head up the ramp and here is something that you don't see everyday, a push gate to get into the ride queue area. Guests have now gotten so accustomed to waiting behind any gate that the crowd seems to invariably stop at the top of the ramp until the ride operator indicates it is okay to push in on the gate and enter the queue area. The Pirat, while not the most cared for ride, still has its faux sails and rigging, which makes it better than the one at Kings Island in that regard. We were lucky enough to score an end row, and taking the advice to pick my feet up before we crested on our side, you do get some unique moments of something that might be likened to airtime. The fully automatic, single position lapbars are a bonus for this park, helping this to be another ride that operates at a reasonable pace. At the end of the ride, you will notice the exit gates on the unload side have been chained shut, and you are instructed to exit back to the load side and they have further modified the confusing queue maze to allow for an exit path. You exit towards the now disused older picnic grove that is now reserved for use in the parks halloween event.
Finsihing that ride, we head back to the main circle loop path, we look at but do not ride the Breakdance. It is evident the Breakdance, as well as several other things in the park got a nice coat of paint, however due to the modifications to the safety systems on the Breakdance that require every seat to be locked and unlocked by hand, we have ridden it and know the loading process is just entirely too long.
Okay, we have put it off as long as we could, its time to cross the darned bridge in the center of the park. The bridge that takes you from the front part of the park, over the fairgrounds entrance road and into the back part of the park. I swear this bridge gets higher and longer every season, even their own staff do not like it as the park staff can opt to use a ground level crosswalk. We get to the back side of the park, and we bypass several rides: The Giant Wheel, the rock wall, the go-karts, the entire waterpark. I note the waterpark has been renamed Splashwater Kingdom, rather than the former Hurricane Harbor name. I suppose given recent disasters, Six Flags thought it unwise to use the Hurricane name. I note the name is about the only thing that has changed as the theming looks to remain the same, right down to the use of what are commonly referred to as hurricane flags as theming. More Flags = More Fun, right?
We stop off at a wonderfully air conditioned comfort station, one of the things this park did do right, and I noted amogst the ammenities at the comfort stations in the park are cell phone recharging stations, for only $2 you too can have your cell phone battery rapid charged. No, I didn't try it out to see how well it works. I have to wonder how big of a market there really is for this. I also think this is a sign of the times, go to any decent size park anymore and look in the ride queues, you are likely to see people on their cell phones, not so much talking as texting, or playing games, or using the cellular internet connectivity. Those last two, particularly the internet functionality can really put a hurting to a phone battery. Every now and again I long for the days when going to a theme park meant the minute you left the house until the minute you got home, you were completely out of touch, and if you didn't have an answering machine, so much the better. Going on a two week vacation meant two weeks of being totally out of touch with the real world. I suppose you could still do that to yourself (I did it in Ireland last fall), but now we have been programmed to take our mobile devices wherever we go. Oh, where was I? Digressing, again. What a, uhm, surprise.
Anyway, Rideman reminded me of his distinct dislike for Chang, so I head to Chang alone. I breeze past the shaded but empty queue maze, note the fact the weeds and vegetation that had started to take over the ride entrance and exit have been trimmed back, and start to head up the stairs. The sign at the bottom of the stairs told me I was in for a 30 minute wait, and the line was just haflway down the stairs. I note the ride wait signs are "sponsored" by the parks pay-extra line jumping program. I think, this is a B&M and the wait is just down one flight of stairs from the station, no way its 15 minutes. I forgot three things: a) I'm not at a park that cares about ride throughput b) It's a B&M stand up, even Cedar Point decided to mothball a train because they couldn't get the trains out fast enough to run 3, c) this is Kentucky Kingdom where we only run one train, and take our own sweet time doing it. I must have joined right after the line advnaced, because 1 circuit later I advance to the top of the stairs, two circuits later I am in the back seat queue, and three circuits later I am in the train. I take the back right 'seat' and struggle a fair bit to get the belt fastened, a feeling not unfamiliar to me on a B&M ride, but I do get the thing buckled all on my own. I head up the lift, around the turnaround and down into B&M stand up coaster goodness. I think there are 5 inversions on this one, all wonderfully intense, the mid course barely hits and all too soon its back to the station. Down the stairs and then a forced trip through the gift shop. At the exit of the gift shop, Rideman is pawing through a book, I ask what it is, and he indicated its a cheklist off all of Six Flags rides, in all of their parks - for $10. I don't buy one, but I think its a really neat idea to build chain wide synergy.
We then walk past the sites were a Chaos, a car ride, and several carnival style food trailers have been removed, to make way for waterpark expansion, namely the Mega-Wedgie (no, I am not kidding!), and Deluge waterslides. We also notice T^2 (Thats Terror to the Second Power, how's that for a geeky ride name) has a brand new entrance formed by cutting a new entrance way directly into the queue maze instead of routing people around to the old entrance at the backside of the ride. Signs alert us that a full queue house is a 2 hour wait, man what a depressing thought. Luckily the ride was only a station wait, but to say its only a station wait is both true and misleading as the seat queues can easily hold 6 trains worth of riders. We wait out the line for the back seat, dismayed by the one train operation on a weekend. After what seemed like almost a 20-30 minute wait we were on, and hey the wild hedge under the lift hill has been trimmed to the point where it doesn't brush your legs. That is an improvement. Using proper ride posture, we were able to escape the somewhat rough running ride mostly unscathed. We exit the ride, head down the exit ramp and look up at the transfer table. Uhm, I see a second set of bogies but no car bodies, and more importantly no seats on the other train. It's quite obious this ride has not yet been given its second train for this season, what are they waiting on?
We walk back and rejoin the main path, and all is not bad, I mean look they have Blizzard River open despite the ride clearly being marked as closed on the signs out front. We decline a ride on Blizzard River, I recall waiting almost 20-30 minutes in a line far shorter than the line it has today. We do take advantage of the misting fans on the main walkway. We get around to the former site of Top Eliminator Dragsters (man this park has ripped out a bunch of stuff since my last visit) you know its bad when a Six Flags park eliminated a pay extra attraction. The area around Top Eliminator has been converted to a live performace stage with a few benches. According to the park guide it hosts karaoke during the week, and live guest bands on the weekends. Today we had a band, that was alright, nothing that great. The band had an active audience of about 6 people, including 2 girls who were WAY to into it, as in I think they might have been family members of the band, or shills planted by the band to make it look better thn it really was.
I note the walkway back to where the actual Dragster ride, and Twisted Twins beyond has been sealed off with tall chain link fencing. We continue around the open path and walk under Thunder Run. Thunder Run has received a layer of tall privacy fence around its perimeter where it is near a walkway. Well, this will eliminate a popular line jumping spot/shortcut as the privacy fence seperated the queue area from the walkway. We enter the queue and its just to the bottom of the stairs, which is just past the 30 minute wait sign.
Thunder Run only has one train to start with, then they have taken lessons from Busch Gardens Tampa in that they check seatbelts first, then come back around to check lap bars. Add to this a crew that is in no hurrty to get things done, a safety spiel that they wait until after the train is loaded and checked to give, and we are talking a train heading out of the station every 6 minutes. Thats 10 dispatches per hour, and the train seats 24, no wait there is a seat roped off, 22 per ride. Thats 220 persons per hour on one of the parks major rides. That, my friends, is disgusting. After waiting entirely too long, the ride gets even more disgusting when I get into a seat, grab the seatbelt and find the two ends of the belt to have at least 2 inches between them. Did I not just spend two days riding wood coasters, in PTC trains no less, that are way more intense an airtime filled than this one? I take the walk of shame and console myself with a trip to the parks Ben And Jerry's where I order the biggest, most calorie laden sundae on the menu. Just kidding about the sundae, I do grab a lemonade to quench my thirst.
After that sad experience, we head to the Flying Dutchman. This is the wooden shoes ride sort of like a circle swing ride. It has a special spot for me as it is alledged to have come from Kings Island. In a brief moment of sanity, Six Flags actually removed the lapbars from the ride, going with just seatbelts. We take a nice relaxing wooden shoe ride, and I note the ride is mostly fully automatic, expect the turret stops lowering itself about 2' off the ground, and the ride operator lowers it the rest of the way manually. A neat fun ride.
We then notice a big privacy fence has been built behind the International Carousel flanking the restroom building blocking off the other entrance to the Northwest Territory. Add Twisted Twins, Mile High Falls, and Zeppelins to the list of rides that have gone out of service since my last visit. No wonder they sold me a six visit pass for only $30.
We finish up with a ride on Rollerskater, how come I can't ride Thunder Run, but I have loads of room in the cars of the kiddie coaster. We then make our way to the front of the park, again crossing that darned bridge. We take alook at Lonney Tunes Music Land (the parks kiddie rides area), surely putting the candy store in kiddie land is purely coincidence, right? We do a gift shop run through Exclusively Six Flags (shortened to just Flags on the park guide), and again I see nothing that even fits the description of a flag for sale. We also look in the Looney Tunes shop, where I am most confused when I come to an aisle stuffed with Mickey, Minnie, and their friends. Remind me again whose park I am visiting?
Even more confusing, Rideman asks me to look at a directional signpost located jut to the LEFT of the Himalayah, and asks me what is wrong with it. I look up and the sign clearly tells me to turn LEFT to go to the Himalayah, when clearly the ride is to the RIGHT. Rideman tried several times to get both the ride and the sign in the same frame, but just can't do it, so we look at another side of the signpost and it gets even worse. On the left hand side of the sigpost it indicates "<- Himalayah" , and the right hand side says "Himalayah ^", so this side is giving two conflicting directions to the ride, both of which are wrong as it should say "Himalayah ->" We spot an employee, not just any employee, but one wearing a suit and tie, we stop him, walk him over to the signpost and point the problem out to him. He could not have been less interested if he tried.
We then exit the park, and again I pass the "More Flags = More Fun" signs. Hmm, I still can't grasp the logic as to how the quanity of cloth decorations you have flying in the breeze correlates to the amount of fun the experience is. I mean I am a flag collector and have well over 200 flags (mostly desktop miniatures, but I do have full size versions of the flags for 8 different nations. If More Flags = More Fun, I should be enjoying a never ending fiesta. (Incidently, Spain or Mexico are not in those 8). Then again, its been pointed out to me that Voyage has 16 flags, and 16 > 6 so maybe Six Flags is right: More Flags DOES equal More Fun!.