Hutch
Strata Poster
I recently returned from a big trip (for me at least; it was probably the biggest theme park trip I’ve ever done). 4 parks, 3 new to me, and another I’d done in the past. Swept up 30 new creds, including my 100th, and no spite (except for a couple of +1’s that had height restrictions which I didn’t attempt). I had a blast and each day got better than the last.
If anyone’s read my reports in the past you may know that they can be pretty long and I like to go into detail, but I still enjoy writing them. I took a **** ton of pictures as well, each day more than the last I think.
Usually it’s one of my parents that travel with me (I’m still 17 so can’t check into hotels just yet), and this time it was my mom. She could only take a couple days off from work so some of the parks had to be done on the weekend.
Day 0 – Painful Traveling
We flew out of Boston on Friday June 17th in the afternoon. We actually had a connecting flight in Philadelphia before arriving in Louisville that evening. Unfortunately, yet somehow unsurprisingly, we flew out of Boston an hour later than scheduled, and I actually don’t remember if there was a legitimate reason why. I think it was the airline being really slow and whatnot; for example, they board the plane from front to back, which is really **** stupid because it just holds up the boarding process even longer. It’s much more efficient to board from the back first.
Because of that delay it looked like with would have a pretty tight connection to our 2nd plane in Phillie, until we realized that one became delayed because of maintenance. I wasn’t too annoyed by this, because if our first plane was on time we’d still be waiting the same time. The real annoying bit came was when we were trying to take off. We were stuck on the runaway for an hour because the airport became a traffic jam. We had to “wait our turn” because apparently flights to NYC and DC had priority over others. It was a somewhat smaller aircraft too so the actual flight was a bit longer what it normally would have been.
Okay, enough of my rant. Fortunately the travel after that was fairly simple. Our plane seats were the second row so we got off quick. We picked up our rental car, and it was just a short 2 min drive out to our hotel. There’s a road with a bunch of hotels right next to each other, conveniently right between the airport and the first park, Kentucky Kingdom.
It was almost 10 PM by then, and just for **** and giggles we decided to do a quick drive by of the park. I was actually able to see it from our airplane (rather exciting!) but I still wanted to get up close and personal, especially since the park was right there.
We drove into empty parking lot and briefly checked out the park. Tried to take a pic or two of Lightning Run, though they didn’t turn out to be that great. Ride looked pretty good though.
We returned to our hotel after that preview for the next day.
Day 1 – Part 1 – Kentucky Kingdom
As stated above, this park was really easy to get to as our hotel street somewhat borders the park. We arrived to the entrance at around 9:40 in the morning. Park opened at 10, and there was already a bit of a crowd, especially for opening.
It was a Saturday after all. I was a bit concerned for today (we also planned to do Holiday World in the afternoon), but we turned out to be fine.
So we had to wait in a bit of a line for tickets. The reason we didn’t buy them online was because of an out-of-state deal (though I’m not sure if it works for Indiana or Ohio). Admission is only $30, and it includes free drink wristbands as well as free admission for the following day! Fantastic deal if you ask me, even if we didn’t do the 2nd day.
It was also HOT out, with the temperature being in the 90s. Today was the hottest day of the trip, but it remained quite humid throughout the trip.
So the park opens and we do a brisk walk to the back of the park for Storm Chaser, passing the other rides on the way.
But when we get near the woodie we’re informed that the rides at the back half of the park don’t open until 10:30. So we had back over the bridge to Lightning Run, and fortunately queues hadn’t built up yet so we walked onto back row.
I loved it. The airtime is very strong and I didn’t find any pain at all. It’s very smooth and all the transitions work very well. The quick low to ground turns are quite fun, leading up to my favorite part of the ride: those quick bunny hops, which had the ride’s best airtime imo.
I think I can only really compare this to RMC coasters. It’s around the same size, has a steep drop, sharp a hills and transitions, and there’s even a backwards airtime hill, something that RMC likes to do.
I don’t really have any complaints with the ride itself. I just wish a roof covered the brake run. They had two trains running (which was good as I had a slight feeling they were only gonna have one), so we’d be sitting on the brake run for about 2 min in the scorching sun. Storm Chaser was like this as well.
I wish I got more than that one ride during my time there. Instead I spent some time getting in some rides in on Storm Chaser. It would’ve been nice to know about the staggered ride opening (I didn’t see any info at the entrance, and other people were confused about it as well) then we could’ve spent the first half hour getting multiple rides in on Lightning while the queue was short. But I’m glad our one ride was in on the back row, which I’d imagine is the best seat in the house. Fantastic ride. 9.5/10
After that ride I check the time and it’s almost 10:30, so we make our way back to Storm Chaser, my second RMC after Wicked Cyclone.
So they’re only running one train and they seem to be taking they’re time with getting everything dispatched. Fortunately there isn’t much of a wait for back row. One thing I noticed with this coaster is that it’s quite loud, much louder than Wicked Cyclone. I figured it must be something with the steel supports?
Onto the ride now. Fairly quick lift hill up and into the barrel roll drop, and this thing is pretty cool. There’s some weird sideways and upside down hangtime, and if your sitting in the back it whips you through the second half of the inversion.
The first airtime hill has some fantastic sustained ejector air. And there’s certainly more where that came from.
The overbank stall inversion thing (I don’t even know what they’re calling it or if it has an official name; it’s barely an inversion too imo) is very floaty, as is the smaller one next to it. They give nice pull through from the back as well. The pair of off axis airtime hills might be my favorite moments though. Your getting some strong airtime but the banking gives you some laterals, so the train throws you around for a bit. There’s another great airtime hill before the “corked roll” :roll: (it’s really just a zero g roll), which has probably the most floater of the ride.
That set of final airtime hills is incredibly fun. The POVs don’t give a good sense of the airtime they give (I think we’ve all come to learn that POVs really don’t do RMC coasters justice, if you were to chose one coaster type). It’s a great 1-2-3-4 punch that still give abrupt airtime.
The final helix into the overbank turn is perhaps the "weakest" part of the ride, but it’s still good fun and is a nice cool down before finishing off the ride.
Based off of track length and comparing it to other RMCs, it may seem like a fairly short ride. But I thought it was quite a good length and there’s a lot packed in there. I also can’t really think of many other rides that use all of their momentum from lift hill to break run without the use of any trims. The final turn before the break run isn’t even banked and the train is almost running on fumes then.
After our first ride I went around back for another one while my mom went to the bathroom and got some water. I wanted to try out the front half of the train, and luckily I saw a single rider about to hop on the front, so I move up and ride with. I realized that’s one of the best things about being a single rider when waiting in the station; it would’ve been close to another 10 min wait for the front but instead I just walk right onto the front with no wait. This happened a couple more times during the trip as well.
I got a couple more rides on this a bit later, and while I think I prefer the back, you’re pretty much getting the same amount of airtime. The middle was the only area I didn’t try out, but I’d imagine it’s still very good there.
Overall you have a set of some fantastic elements adding up to an amazing ride. Compared to Wicked Cyclone, they’re pretty close, but I think I prefer Storm just a little more because the airtime seemed to be more abrupt than Cyclone. 9.5/10
We went to go clean up the rest of the reds there, so we make our way over to the 3rd weather "themed" coaster, Thunder Run
This was, surprisingly, one of our longest waits during our time at this park. I figured it would remain pretty quiet, but I think this may have had 1 train operations (I can’t remember for sure though) so we ended up waiting a little more than ten minutes. That’s still quite remarkable that that was our longest wait for a coaster on a Saturday.
As for the ride? It’s meh. I actually had hope for this too, I know they put an effort into retracking and it sounded like it was running well. But it was still very rough and we only sat in the middle. The first turn after the drop in particular was very shaky.
It’s a bit of a weird layout I think. It alternates between turns with small airtime hops in between. And you do get airtime, but didn’t really matter as the ride is so rough. Isn’t this a Hurler clone? I haven’t heard good things about those. I’m not gonna bother rating it (or the remaining creds); all you need to know is that it’s ****. Worst woodie of the trip I think.
After that we continue over to T3, the park’s SLC.
This was only my second SLC. I’ve somehow (thankfully) managed to avoid these in recent years, not coming across them at all. And I haven’t ridden Mind Eraser (SFNE) since 2012, so when we get near the ride it all comes back to me and I start to get a bit concerned. Well, I wasn’t legitimately worried or anything, more like “Ugh this is gonna suck.”
And yeah it was the worst ride of the trip. At least it was a walk on though (it seems that the GP are aware of this ride type’s reputation). It also looks ridiculous being in all red.
I guess it could’ve been a lot worse. They installed new trains without the abysmal OTSR’s. Instead you get something kind of like the soft Intamin OTSR’s (ie. Maverick or I305), but it’s just seat belt straps. So you don’t get any sort of headbanging, but it didn’t save the ride from being **** ****! It’s just so rough and shaky and uncomfortable and unbearable. The restraints even stapled my thighs on the brake run, ruining the only bearable part of the ride.
I used to think that the layout of an SLC was a decent idea ruined by headbanging, but this ride proved otherwise.
Ugh… at least that part was over. +1 and done.
We make our way back over underneath Thunder Run to pick up the last cred.
Roller Skater!!!
It’s what you’d expect. TBH this was more enjoyable than Thunder Run or T3, making it the 3rd best coaster in the park!
We got all the creds done and were doing fantastic on time. I anticipated we’d be here for around 4 hours, but was about noon now, so we figured we could leave at 1. I wanted to have a bit of time getting a couple more re rides in and maybe doing some other stuff.
We get another quick ride in on Storm before getting some lunch at a place near Thunder. Luckily they get the 2nd train running so the queue is a bit shorter, not extending beyond the station. The ride seems to be running a bit better now that's it's been cycling for a couple of hours.
I hadn’t heard great things about the park food honestly it wasn’t bad; I was particularly impressed by the stuffed pretzel sticks!
After that I go get one last ride on Storm by myself. Was able to find another single rider waiting for back row. Then I meet back up with my mom and we make our way back to the front of the park.
I don’t know if you could tell by any of the previous photos, but there were no crowds for any of the rides. But it was a Saturday in June, how could that happen? Well here’s where almost everyone was:
And that’s just the main pool area. There’s a ton more waterslides and whatnot with queues for each of them. It helped that the bridge shoves you right into the main pool area, and that the waterpark took up like half the park’s space. Oh, and of course it helped that it was boiling out. So with the waterpark eating up all the GP, the rest of the park remained pretty quiet. And I was hoping that would happen, so I was quite pleased to see this happen, not only here, but at Holiday World and Kings Island.
We went over to do the Giant Wheel so we could get some good views of the park. Surprisingly a bit of a wait for this (actually, I think this was our longest queue for the park), but after 10 min we hop on. Pretty meh color scheme though.
The back of the park, mainly the area around Thunder Run, was probably the nicest looking area of the park imo. There’s plenty of trees surrounding the ride, making it look pretty nice.
It’s a nice long ferris wheel ride (you go around 3 times and get stuck up top a couple times), but buy the 3rd rotation I’ve had enough and I want to go get another ride on Lightning Run.
But there’s a bit of a queue, so we’re like “screw it.” It looked like it would be around 20 min, but by then it’s around 1 PM and we want give our selves plenty of time for traveling and spending time at Holiday World.
We also thought that maybe we could return to the park later that evening for a bit, as we were at the same hotel, but we decided not to. So that’s unfortunate that we only got one ride on Lightning. I wouldn’t have minded to do some other stuff, like that ridiculous inverted frisbee thing (never done that kind of ride before), or that Fab(ri) drop tower (I really liked the one at Thorpe). But I did get 4 rides in on Storm Chaser, which is the best ride of the park.
Overall thoughts then: I really enjoyed this park. The waterpark benefited us very well so we were able to get in and out in 3 hours. The out of state deal is insane and free drinks are fantastic (sometimes you don’t appreciate that until you get to a park where water bottles are 4 dollars each!). Obviously we didn’t do many flats but they seem to have a good variety of plenty of rides. And of course the waterpark is huge, which is nice if you like that kind of thing. As for the coasters, 3 are meh, but the other two are amazing and compliment each other well. It’s nice that they’re each at the ends of the park, filling the gap nicely. And aren’t they still working with RMC for another ride? Coaster selection could only improve greatly if that’s the case.
Definitely worth the visit here if you're in the area, or as a part of another large trip. You only need a half day if you just want to want to do creds and flats, but you could probably spend the entire day here if you decide to do the water park as well.
I also like how they kept the Six Flags at the front of the park:
Thanks for reading… up next is Holiday World!
If anyone’s read my reports in the past you may know that they can be pretty long and I like to go into detail, but I still enjoy writing them. I took a **** ton of pictures as well, each day more than the last I think.
Usually it’s one of my parents that travel with me (I’m still 17 so can’t check into hotels just yet), and this time it was my mom. She could only take a couple days off from work so some of the parks had to be done on the weekend.
Day 0 – Painful Traveling
We flew out of Boston on Friday June 17th in the afternoon. We actually had a connecting flight in Philadelphia before arriving in Louisville that evening. Unfortunately, yet somehow unsurprisingly, we flew out of Boston an hour later than scheduled, and I actually don’t remember if there was a legitimate reason why. I think it was the airline being really slow and whatnot; for example, they board the plane from front to back, which is really **** stupid because it just holds up the boarding process even longer. It’s much more efficient to board from the back first.
Because of that delay it looked like with would have a pretty tight connection to our 2nd plane in Phillie, until we realized that one became delayed because of maintenance. I wasn’t too annoyed by this, because if our first plane was on time we’d still be waiting the same time. The real annoying bit came was when we were trying to take off. We were stuck on the runaway for an hour because the airport became a traffic jam. We had to “wait our turn” because apparently flights to NYC and DC had priority over others. It was a somewhat smaller aircraft too so the actual flight was a bit longer what it normally would have been.
Okay, enough of my rant. Fortunately the travel after that was fairly simple. Our plane seats were the second row so we got off quick. We picked up our rental car, and it was just a short 2 min drive out to our hotel. There’s a road with a bunch of hotels right next to each other, conveniently right between the airport and the first park, Kentucky Kingdom.
It was almost 10 PM by then, and just for **** and giggles we decided to do a quick drive by of the park. I was actually able to see it from our airplane (rather exciting!) but I still wanted to get up close and personal, especially since the park was right there.
We drove into empty parking lot and briefly checked out the park. Tried to take a pic or two of Lightning Run, though they didn’t turn out to be that great. Ride looked pretty good though.
We returned to our hotel after that preview for the next day.
Day 1 – Part 1 – Kentucky Kingdom
As stated above, this park was really easy to get to as our hotel street somewhat borders the park. We arrived to the entrance at around 9:40 in the morning. Park opened at 10, and there was already a bit of a crowd, especially for opening.
It was a Saturday after all. I was a bit concerned for today (we also planned to do Holiday World in the afternoon), but we turned out to be fine.
So we had to wait in a bit of a line for tickets. The reason we didn’t buy them online was because of an out-of-state deal (though I’m not sure if it works for Indiana or Ohio). Admission is only $30, and it includes free drink wristbands as well as free admission for the following day! Fantastic deal if you ask me, even if we didn’t do the 2nd day.
It was also HOT out, with the temperature being in the 90s. Today was the hottest day of the trip, but it remained quite humid throughout the trip.
So the park opens and we do a brisk walk to the back of the park for Storm Chaser, passing the other rides on the way.
But when we get near the woodie we’re informed that the rides at the back half of the park don’t open until 10:30. So we had back over the bridge to Lightning Run, and fortunately queues hadn’t built up yet so we walked onto back row.
I loved it. The airtime is very strong and I didn’t find any pain at all. It’s very smooth and all the transitions work very well. The quick low to ground turns are quite fun, leading up to my favorite part of the ride: those quick bunny hops, which had the ride’s best airtime imo.
I think I can only really compare this to RMC coasters. It’s around the same size, has a steep drop, sharp a hills and transitions, and there’s even a backwards airtime hill, something that RMC likes to do.
I don’t really have any complaints with the ride itself. I just wish a roof covered the brake run. They had two trains running (which was good as I had a slight feeling they were only gonna have one), so we’d be sitting on the brake run for about 2 min in the scorching sun. Storm Chaser was like this as well.
I wish I got more than that one ride during my time there. Instead I spent some time getting in some rides in on Storm Chaser. It would’ve been nice to know about the staggered ride opening (I didn’t see any info at the entrance, and other people were confused about it as well) then we could’ve spent the first half hour getting multiple rides in on Lightning while the queue was short. But I’m glad our one ride was in on the back row, which I’d imagine is the best seat in the house. Fantastic ride. 9.5/10
After that ride I check the time and it’s almost 10:30, so we make our way back to Storm Chaser, my second RMC after Wicked Cyclone.
So they’re only running one train and they seem to be taking they’re time with getting everything dispatched. Fortunately there isn’t much of a wait for back row. One thing I noticed with this coaster is that it’s quite loud, much louder than Wicked Cyclone. I figured it must be something with the steel supports?
Onto the ride now. Fairly quick lift hill up and into the barrel roll drop, and this thing is pretty cool. There’s some weird sideways and upside down hangtime, and if your sitting in the back it whips you through the second half of the inversion.
The first airtime hill has some fantastic sustained ejector air. And there’s certainly more where that came from.
The overbank stall inversion thing (I don’t even know what they’re calling it or if it has an official name; it’s barely an inversion too imo) is very floaty, as is the smaller one next to it. They give nice pull through from the back as well. The pair of off axis airtime hills might be my favorite moments though. Your getting some strong airtime but the banking gives you some laterals, so the train throws you around for a bit. There’s another great airtime hill before the “corked roll” :roll: (it’s really just a zero g roll), which has probably the most floater of the ride.
That set of final airtime hills is incredibly fun. The POVs don’t give a good sense of the airtime they give (I think we’ve all come to learn that POVs really don’t do RMC coasters justice, if you were to chose one coaster type). It’s a great 1-2-3-4 punch that still give abrupt airtime.
The final helix into the overbank turn is perhaps the "weakest" part of the ride, but it’s still good fun and is a nice cool down before finishing off the ride.
Based off of track length and comparing it to other RMCs, it may seem like a fairly short ride. But I thought it was quite a good length and there’s a lot packed in there. I also can’t really think of many other rides that use all of their momentum from lift hill to break run without the use of any trims. The final turn before the break run isn’t even banked and the train is almost running on fumes then.
After our first ride I went around back for another one while my mom went to the bathroom and got some water. I wanted to try out the front half of the train, and luckily I saw a single rider about to hop on the front, so I move up and ride with. I realized that’s one of the best things about being a single rider when waiting in the station; it would’ve been close to another 10 min wait for the front but instead I just walk right onto the front with no wait. This happened a couple more times during the trip as well.
I got a couple more rides on this a bit later, and while I think I prefer the back, you’re pretty much getting the same amount of airtime. The middle was the only area I didn’t try out, but I’d imagine it’s still very good there.
Overall you have a set of some fantastic elements adding up to an amazing ride. Compared to Wicked Cyclone, they’re pretty close, but I think I prefer Storm just a little more because the airtime seemed to be more abrupt than Cyclone. 9.5/10
We went to go clean up the rest of the reds there, so we make our way over to the 3rd weather "themed" coaster, Thunder Run
This was, surprisingly, one of our longest waits during our time at this park. I figured it would remain pretty quiet, but I think this may have had 1 train operations (I can’t remember for sure though) so we ended up waiting a little more than ten minutes. That’s still quite remarkable that that was our longest wait for a coaster on a Saturday.
As for the ride? It’s meh. I actually had hope for this too, I know they put an effort into retracking and it sounded like it was running well. But it was still very rough and we only sat in the middle. The first turn after the drop in particular was very shaky.
It’s a bit of a weird layout I think. It alternates between turns with small airtime hops in between. And you do get airtime, but didn’t really matter as the ride is so rough. Isn’t this a Hurler clone? I haven’t heard good things about those. I’m not gonna bother rating it (or the remaining creds); all you need to know is that it’s ****. Worst woodie of the trip I think.
After that we continue over to T3, the park’s SLC.
This was only my second SLC. I’ve somehow (thankfully) managed to avoid these in recent years, not coming across them at all. And I haven’t ridden Mind Eraser (SFNE) since 2012, so when we get near the ride it all comes back to me and I start to get a bit concerned. Well, I wasn’t legitimately worried or anything, more like “Ugh this is gonna suck.”
And yeah it was the worst ride of the trip. At least it was a walk on though (it seems that the GP are aware of this ride type’s reputation). It also looks ridiculous being in all red.
I guess it could’ve been a lot worse. They installed new trains without the abysmal OTSR’s. Instead you get something kind of like the soft Intamin OTSR’s (ie. Maverick or I305), but it’s just seat belt straps. So you don’t get any sort of headbanging, but it didn’t save the ride from being **** ****! It’s just so rough and shaky and uncomfortable and unbearable. The restraints even stapled my thighs on the brake run, ruining the only bearable part of the ride.
I used to think that the layout of an SLC was a decent idea ruined by headbanging, but this ride proved otherwise.
Ugh… at least that part was over. +1 and done.
We make our way back over underneath Thunder Run to pick up the last cred.
Roller Skater!!!
It’s what you’d expect. TBH this was more enjoyable than Thunder Run or T3, making it the 3rd best coaster in the park!
We got all the creds done and were doing fantastic on time. I anticipated we’d be here for around 4 hours, but was about noon now, so we figured we could leave at 1. I wanted to have a bit of time getting a couple more re rides in and maybe doing some other stuff.
We get another quick ride in on Storm before getting some lunch at a place near Thunder. Luckily they get the 2nd train running so the queue is a bit shorter, not extending beyond the station. The ride seems to be running a bit better now that's it's been cycling for a couple of hours.
I hadn’t heard great things about the park food honestly it wasn’t bad; I was particularly impressed by the stuffed pretzel sticks!
After that I go get one last ride on Storm by myself. Was able to find another single rider waiting for back row. Then I meet back up with my mom and we make our way back to the front of the park.
I don’t know if you could tell by any of the previous photos, but there were no crowds for any of the rides. But it was a Saturday in June, how could that happen? Well here’s where almost everyone was:
And that’s just the main pool area. There’s a ton more waterslides and whatnot with queues for each of them. It helped that the bridge shoves you right into the main pool area, and that the waterpark took up like half the park’s space. Oh, and of course it helped that it was boiling out. So with the waterpark eating up all the GP, the rest of the park remained pretty quiet. And I was hoping that would happen, so I was quite pleased to see this happen, not only here, but at Holiday World and Kings Island.
We went over to do the Giant Wheel so we could get some good views of the park. Surprisingly a bit of a wait for this (actually, I think this was our longest queue for the park), but after 10 min we hop on. Pretty meh color scheme though.
The back of the park, mainly the area around Thunder Run, was probably the nicest looking area of the park imo. There’s plenty of trees surrounding the ride, making it look pretty nice.
It’s a nice long ferris wheel ride (you go around 3 times and get stuck up top a couple times), but buy the 3rd rotation I’ve had enough and I want to go get another ride on Lightning Run.
But there’s a bit of a queue, so we’re like “screw it.” It looked like it would be around 20 min, but by then it’s around 1 PM and we want give our selves plenty of time for traveling and spending time at Holiday World.
We also thought that maybe we could return to the park later that evening for a bit, as we were at the same hotel, but we decided not to. So that’s unfortunate that we only got one ride on Lightning. I wouldn’t have minded to do some other stuff, like that ridiculous inverted frisbee thing (never done that kind of ride before), or that Fab(ri) drop tower (I really liked the one at Thorpe). But I did get 4 rides in on Storm Chaser, which is the best ride of the park.
Overall thoughts then: I really enjoyed this park. The waterpark benefited us very well so we were able to get in and out in 3 hours. The out of state deal is insane and free drinks are fantastic (sometimes you don’t appreciate that until you get to a park where water bottles are 4 dollars each!). Obviously we didn’t do many flats but they seem to have a good variety of plenty of rides. And of course the waterpark is huge, which is nice if you like that kind of thing. As for the coasters, 3 are meh, but the other two are amazing and compliment each other well. It’s nice that they’re each at the ends of the park, filling the gap nicely. And aren’t they still working with RMC for another ride? Coaster selection could only improve greatly if that’s the case.
Definitely worth the visit here if you're in the area, or as a part of another large trip. You only need a half day if you just want to want to do creds and flats, but you could probably spend the entire day here if you decide to do the water park as well.
I also like how they kept the Six Flags at the front of the park:
Thanks for reading… up next is Holiday World!
