Coaster reviews

Fun Intensity

This was my first stand-up coaster and I liked it much better than I was expecting given what I've read about them. (For what it is worth, I was in the front row, which seems to be the best place to ride these.) The inversions are fun and taking them while standing up definitely gives a unique experience and increases the intensity. I personally didn't experience any crotch pain or headbanging. There wasn't any rattle of which to speak despite this being only the third coaster B&M ever built. It isn't the best coaster in the park, but I found it to be underrated.

Airtimes First Drop

It's sort of like Fury's older sister. It has a great drop and great airtime. People complain about the trim brakes, but when I rode it, they were hitting even less hard than the ones on Fury. The MCBR does interfere with the pacing some though. Like every other roller coaster, it rattles a little bit, but it didn't cause me any discomfort even when I was dehydrated at the end of the day, which is usually the worst time for rattle for me.

Rattle Headbanging Discomfort

So even though I haven't re-ridden this, now that I have ridden several other woodies, I'm updating the review since I have more context. I still think this ride is unbearably rough, but now I know it isn't just the normal woody roughness, but this coaster also surprisingly seems to have tangent-radius transitions. Just watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JTTNUJrLjQ (be sure to use 60FPS for maximum effect) and note the train "slams" into each transition, suddenly and jerkily starting to pitch, yaw, or roll. This is exactly what gets Arrows the reputation for being headbangy. So, this coaster has all the rattle of a woody and all the jank of an Arrow. This isn't a combination that allows me to enjoy it at all.

Airtimes First Drop Rattle

I actually enjoyed this one quite a lot. The ride quality depends very strongly on where you sit. It seems rougher toward the rear of the train and the rear seat of each car is definitely rougher. This difference is significant enough that I find the front row to be rather pleasant while the back car is nearly intolerable. The front also seems to get better airtime on this with quite a bit of floater and a few pops of ejector. The back gets a bit of floater and not really any ejector, unless you count jackhammering as airtime. The front is also the best place to experience the surprisingly-steep first drop. Just do yourself a favor and ride it in front, or you might come away saying that this is the "worst ride ever" like the girl sitting next to me did on my ride in the first row of the back car.

Airtimes Fun Smoothness Too short

I'm starting to realize that I actually enjoy wooden coasters, after my awful experience on the janky transitions of InvadR at BGW and the roughness of Hurler at Carowinds. This one was quite smooth (for a woody, anyway, no-one's going to be confusing this with a B&M) and had a bunch of gentle but still very enjoyable floater airtime in the front. The back gets stronger floater airtime except during the drop after the second turnaround, which gives a brief but glorious ejector pop. (I recommend the middle row of the back car to avoid wheel seats.) The loose PTC lapbars make the airtime quite enjoyable. (I'm actually skinny enough that if I staple myself hard, I can get the lapbar into its fully-lowered position. This kills the airtime. I do not recommend.) My only real complaints are that it could stand to be longer and that the tunnel at the end is extremely loud. I didn't find any noticeable difference in ride quality between the tracks.

Airtimes Fun Smoothness Too short

I'm starting to realize that I actually enjoy wooden coasters, after my awful experience on the janky transitions of InvadR at BGW and the roughness of Hurler at Carowinds. This one was quite smooth (for a woody, anyway, no-one's going to be confusing this with a B&M) and had a bunch of gentle but still very enjoyable floater airtime in the front. The back gets stronger floater airtime except during the drop after the second turnaround, which gives a brief but glorious ejector pop. (I recommend the middle row of the back car to avoid wheel seats.) The loose PTC lapbars make the airtime quite enjoyable. (I'm actually skinny enough that if I staple myself hard, I can get the lapbar into its fully-lowered position. This kills the airtime. I do not recommend.) My only real complaints are that it could stand to be longer and that the tunnel at the end is extremely loud. I didn't find any noticeable difference in ride quality between the tracks.

Theming Inversions Launch Rattle Discomfort Lap Bar

The theming is definitely more than you would expect from a Cedar Fair park. The launch kicks hard and is in my top 2 favorite launches from a stop (the other being Rock'n Roller Coaster at Disney Hollywood Studios). The inversions are also fun, if you can look past the roughness, and this coaster is brutally rough. The first time I rode it, I thought it might be using Arrow-style tangent radius transitions. After a re-ride, I now believe that the trains are just shuffling and jackhammering their way through the layout, and this layout is far too intense for this level of poor tracking to be acceptable. If I don't ride defensively, my legs repeatedly slam back and forth between the hard metal bars on each side of the lap bar, and the shin pads are as usual uncomfortable for my long legs. I couldn't find any way to brace my legs to avoid this. I can lock them in the middle with my arms and prevent the legbanging by holding onto the grab bar, but this prevents me from sitting in a position where I can make proper use of the headrest, resulting in neck pain. This has a lot of potential, but in my opinion an indoor dark roller coaster needs to be smoother than this to really be enjoyable.

Inversions Intensity Layout Headbanging

How does a park of this size only have one B&M, and a relocated one at that? Anyway, this is a nice old-school Stengel-designed one and it really shows though the speed and intensity of the entire layout. The inversions are very forceful and the intensity never really lets up. The MCBR hardly hits at all and the back of the train even gets suprisingly good airtime on the subsequent drop. After a few rerides, I've decided that I like the back best, mainly due to the airtime and the whippiness as the front of the train pulls the back through various elements. The front is fun too though, but it can sometimes be a big headbangy going into that first corkscrew. I can avoid that by just pushing my head up against the right side of the restraint before that element though.

Fun Intensity Rattle Capacity

This surprised me with its intensity, mainly due to the sustained positive Gs. The rattle, however, is also intense and detracted from the experience. The capacity is horrid and for reasons unknown, they were only running 1 train, making it even worse. The ops were hauling though and it looks like the layout should support 3 trains, which would improve the situation somewhat. It just isn't worth waiting that long in line as it is though. That line was just as long as the one for Twisted Timbers, even though they were only running 1 train on that too.

Inversions Discomfort Tear it down! Pointless

I really want to love old Arrows, and sometimes I do (like with Loch Ness Monster and Carolina Cyclone), but this one just misses the mark. The first drop (usually a great part of Arrow loopers, for me anyway) is curved, janky, and not really fun. All the transitions are rather bad and some of them are taken quite fast, leading to discomfort. (My head seems to rise far enough above the restraints on Arrow trains that I don't usually headbang per se, but it still isn't comfortable.) The first loop is nice and the corkscrews are taken slowly and give some hangtime. The rest of the layout seems rather pointless though. I hate putting "Tear it down!" on a piece of history like this, but I really don't see the need for this one to exist. The lake space would be better used by something that could actually interact with the lake, like a B&M invert or a B&M flyer or a B&M wing.

Theming Inversions Smoothness Capacity Inversions

I mean, this wasn't awful. It wasn't painful or uncomfortable, was quite smooth, and the inversions (if you get them at all) are unpredictable and that adds an element of excitement, but the ride is really too short to get much enjoyment out it and the capacity is too low to make waiting in line for multiple rides worth it. Curiously, this is the first coaster I have seen where the chain lift completely stops when no train is on the hill. I also don't know why these free-spins are called 4D coasters at all. A "normal" coaster gives you 3 "dimensions", pitch, yaw, and roll. A true Arrow/S&S 4D coaster adds the seat pitch control, which I guess counts as the 4th dimension. But on the free-spins, there is no yaw control at all (you can only go forwards/backwards and up/down) and there is no fixed pitch control as any track pitch change can be and often is counteracted by the pitch of the seats. Therefore, I think "2.5D Free-Spin Coaster" would be a more appropriate name for this genre.

Theming Launch Intensity Theming Launch Lap Bar

Wow, Premier really came a long way with their track profiling in the 10 years between Flight of Fear and this. The transitions on this one are smooth enough to be enjoyable and parts of the ride are surprisingly intense. My favorite part is the headchopper under the queue line at the very end. Shooting out of the indoor section back into the blinding light and directly towards the queue bridge is disorienting and startling. The rapid slope downward to clear the bridge even gives a quick pop of airtime. The first launch starts a bit slowly, but the second launch (which I wasn't expecting) seemed to hit harder and was more exciting, though that may have just been because it surprised me. There's plenty of theming, but I got the impression in the (clevely-disguised MCBR) helicopter scene that some of the theming might be broken. The red train is themed nicely, but the white train is just a featureless outline with no coloring or decals or anything. What's up with that?

First Drop Intensity Ejectors Lap Bar

This was my first-ever RMC and it absolutely lives up to the hype. Most of the first drop is a 0g roll, which is pretty insane. That along with the other inversions provide great hangtime. Other than that, it is mostly a bunch of airtime hills that provide some of the most wonderfully, amazingly violent ejector airtime I have ever experienced. All of the elements are taken extremely fast and the intensity never lets up from the first drop all the way to the brake run. The entire layout is immaculately smooth as well, both in the macro (transitions) sense and micro (no rattle) sense. I only have 2 complaints. The first is that the shin pads on the lap bar are uncomfortable, bordering on painful, due to my very long legs. This happens on just about any restraint that uses shin pads. My other is the lift hill. The anti-rollback system is so noisy, especially as the train speeds up over the top, that it gave me a headache. I wish RMC could have used a silent anti-rollback system like what is becoming increasingly common these days.

Pace Intensity Smoothness Intensity

I experienced full g-LOC on this coaster. My first ride was in the back row and I experienced a severe grayout and tunnel vision, which is more or less what I expected given my experience on other coasters, namely Fury 325. Being under the impression that the back was probably more intense than the front, I then rode in the front row. On that ride, I lost consciousness somewhere around 2/3 of the way through the initial 270° turn. I remember hearing a sort of humming vibration and then waking up around the crest of the first airtime hill. When I first woke up, I was completely disoriented and my first though was "Why am I watching a POV of Project 305?", but then I quickly realized that I was actually on it and that I must have lost consciousness. I then rode in the back row again and had the same experience as my first ride in the back row. I'm definitely going to have to work on my hook breathing technique before I ride this in the front again. Anyway, after the first turnaround, I love the high-speed turns and whippy transitions. The transitions are honestly my favorite part. They are so violent that you somehow get quick pops of ejector airtime, but they aren't uncomfortable at all in my experience. There is also airtime from the hills, but not as good as that on Fury 325, possibly due to the shoulder straps. Overall, I think Fury is better mainly because I have mixed feelings on the loss of consciousness…

Airtimes First Drop Rattle

I rode this in the very front row and I was expecting it to be awful, but I actually found it surprisingly enjoyable. It is definitely rough, but at least in the front, it isn't rough enough to have actually caused me any discomfort. It also has plenty of slingy laterals, but more of the kind you might find on a wild mouse, not the headbangy bank transitions like on an Arrow looper (or on Invadr at Busch Gardens). The layout was nice and it had a few good pops of airtime. This coaster also had the strongest effect of the back of the train pushing the front of the train that I've ever experienced, with the front seeming to accelerate at all the wrong times, which made it sort of unpredictable in a fun way. I suspect the airtime would probably be better in the back, but I'm sure it is much rougher back there. At times while I was waiting I could *see* the back car jackhammering down the track. It had to have been bouncing up and down by at least a centimeter or so. All of that said, I went in to this expecting it to be a one-and-done just to get the credit, but now I can totally see myself riding this once or twice each time I'm in the park.

Inversions Intensity Layout

B&M inverts are always fun and this one is no exception. My preference is to ride from the front get the full effect of the inverted-ness. The inversions are forceful and whippy (causing me to headbang a bit once). I just love how it whips through the first inversion of the batwing and then whips right back through the mirror-image second half. Despite being old, it doesn't really have any more rattle than any other roller coaster. I think the pacing here is better than on my favorite invert, Alpengeist, due to the lack of MCBR, but overall Alpengeist's extra height and speed give it the edge though.

Smoothness

For a wild mouse, it isn't awful. Obviously it has lots of lateral Gs with the flat turns, but I personally don't find those objectionable since I can see them coming and brace (unlike Goldrusher, which will give you whiplash with it sudden lateral jerks going into and out of banks). The ride itself is quite smooth though and there is practically no rattle. The bunny hills are fun and there are actually a couple of halfway-decent pops of airtime. It felt a bit weird riding it alone as a 30-something guy though…

Theming Capacity Discomfort

This coaster wants *so* badly to headbang, but the poor thing has nothing to bang on… I haven't ridden a whole lot of old Arrows, but this has to be the jankiest one yet. On a couple different occasions, it tried to give me sideways whiplash from the tangent-radius bank transitions. The trains and restraints are also definitely not designed for my dis-proportionally leggy 6'1" frame and I could barely contort myself into a position that allowed the restraint to be closed. Ignoring all of that, I guess it was fun. The control system seems to have very inefficient handling of trains in the station though, with the incoming train being stopped fully and held for multiple seconds several times before it reaches the correct position. I know this is a completely gravity-driven design with no drive wheels, but I still think they could have done better than this. Also, a swamp cooler in the station‽ Really‽ This is North Carolina and those things do more harm than good in humid climates…

Theming Lap Bar Hangtime Rattle

Copperhead Strike really goes all-out with the hangtime. Starting right after the station with the jojo roll, every inversion leaves you hanging from the seat. There are no over-the-shoulder restraints of any type here, which definitely intensifies the effect. This was one of my first roller coasters with inversions that didn't have some kind of OTSR and while OTSRs don't really bother me, I definitely am starting to prefer this style of restraint. It also has a few great moments of airtime with bunny hills and the Stengel dive. Usually I think traditional sit-down coasters are best from the back, but this one manages to have great airtime in the front too, and there is definitely more hangtime in the front. The launches aren't the most forceful ones I have ever encountered, but I personally found them to be plenty strong. We need to talk about the rattle though. This ride is only 5 years old and it already rattles worse than just about anything else in the park. It seems to affect every row of every train. I never found it to be painful because it never seems to occur at the same time as high positive Gs, but it is quite distracting and even rather loud at some points. It would definitely be a better experience without that.

Airtimes First Drop Masterpiece

It's hard to put into words how insanely awesome Fury 325 is. The first drop has to be the best first drop of anything I've ever ridden. In the back, there is great airtime as the front of the train pulls the back down the drop. Then at the bottom, it slams from airtime to high positive Gs in a split second. The intensity of the first half is amazing. It speeds through the turns so fast you can hardly tell what is going on, and it still feels incredibly fast as it goes over the airtime hills on the way back to the station. Those airtime hills definitely provide the best airtime of anything I have ridden so far, especially in the back row. I did experience rattle on some rides, and I traced it back to train 2 row 4. I didn't experience the rattle in any other row or on train 1.

Intensity

It's an old Arrow looper, so it is a bit janky and tosses you around some with those tangent-radius transitions, but I personally never had any discomfort or headbanging. (I was definitely riding defensively though.) The loops were surprisingly smooth compared to the ones on Loch Ness Monster, which I found had the tendency to snap my neck forward when the train got into the top part of the loop. The corkscrews were not as bad as I was expecting after reading other people's experiences with Arrow corkscrews.

Inversions Intensity Too short

Boomerangs get a bad rap, but I found this one fairly enjoyable. The inversions are fast and intense, especially when taken in reverse. (This was my first roller coaster to take an inversion backwards.) It is a bit rough, but nothing too awful. I do suspect the vest restraints help it significantly in that department though. I could see it having capacity problems, but there was hardly anyone queuing for it when I was there.

Inversions Location Intensity Rattle Capacity

This was my first (and, at the time of this writing, only) flying coaster. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit overall. The inversions are fast, intense, and just keep coming and coming. The "seating" position means you usually can't see what the track is going to do next, which heightens the intensity. It also plays a role in the corkscrews at the end being the single most disorienting element I have experienced. (As of the time of this writing, no, I have not ridden X2. 😆) It is quite rough, but it never caused any true pain for me. The capacity is absolutely awful. It only runs one train (even though I see no reason why the track layout shouldn't be able to have a wait block and run 2) and the uniqueness of the seating makes it take a long time to load, so I had to wait longer for this than any other ride on the day I visited. If any of the ride ops are reading this, I'm sorry I closed my restraint myself. I did it before the part of the spiel telling me not to was played. But seriously, the rules regarding what parts of the restraints you are allowed to use yourself on which rides are confusing in this park. On Fury and Thunder Striker, you are supposed to buckle the seatbelt but not touch the clamshell. On Carolina Cyclone and Flying Cobras, you are supposed to close the OTSR yourself. On Copperhead Strike, you close the restraint but let the op buckle the seatbelt…

Theming Nice surprise! Fun

I'm not sure whether to call this a mine train or not. It is certainly themed like one and it doesn't have any inversions, but it goes *much* faster than your typical mine train. Either way, it is a very fun ride and the backwards-running section was a complete surprise to me and was quite intense.

First Drop Layout

This was my first Arrow looping roller coaster, and after the reputation that a lot of these have for jerkiness, I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth this was. It isn't B&M-level smoothness of course, but I didn't have any issues with rattle or headbanging. The loops are great, especially the first one. There's even some pretty nice airtime in a few spots, which I wasn't really expecting. This is a true piece of roller coaster history and I hope they keep it around for as long as they can.

Inversions Harness Discomfort

I feel like this has a lot of potential, but it is let down (at least in my case) by restraints that are very uncomfortable to the point of being painful. I usually like to be "stapled" into roller coasters pretty tightly, but the restraint bar on this one was jammed so hard into my thighs and shins that both hurt even before leaving the station. The actual ride was fun, if a bit short, and I would give it a higher rating if the restraints were more comfortable.

Theming Nice surprise! Intensity Rattle Theming Dead spots

I came into this predisposed against it, because it replaced my first "big" roller coaster and one of my all-time favorites, the Big Bad Wolf. However, I was pleasantly surprised overall. The indoor section is incredibly intense, making me start to grey out a bit the first time I rode it. The drop track was also a nice surprise, especially when riding from the middle or back of the train. The final drop has quite a bit of rattle though and that's just about as much rattle as I can take without getting a headache. I put Theming as both a Pro and a Con for this one. The reason for that is because the queue line and the station have Disney-level theming, but the theming in the indoor section of ride seemed to be mostly defunct when I rode it, resulting in confusing dead spots.

Airtimes Intensity Rattle

This is a fun, intense ride, but when I rode it, it was being rather rattly. Pulling 4.1G while rattling gives me a headache, so that wasn't great. I think I would really enjoy it without the rattle though. If that gets fixed, it will get another star from me.

Inversions Masterpiece Intensity

The inversions on this are incredible. The first part of the ride before the brake run just never lets up! It definitely slung me around some, but I never had a problem with headbanging. Personally I think the front row is the only place to ride this one, to take advantage of its inverted-ness. Some people complained about it being slow after the brake run, but when I rode it I found that part to be plenty fast as well, albeit not quite as intense as the initial 4 inversions. Overall this is my favorite roller coaster period as of the time I am writing this.

Smoothness Too short

Seeing the first drop from the ground, I initially wasn't even sure if I wanted to go on this, but I'm very glad I did. It really isn't nearly as bad as it looks from the ground and it is one of the smoothest roller coasters I have ever ridden. The transitions are so smooth and there is so little rattle that it is almost like the train is just floating down the track. My only complaint here is that it would be nice if it was longer.