As part of the Nantimi promotion that Coasterdom took part in, I was invited to go to Hersheypark and experience Fahrenheit. The plan was to enter the park at 9:30 with the other Nantimi winners and have 15 minutes of ERT on Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, Fahrenheit valleyed on the first test run of the day. By about 12:00 or so they had a crane on site and were beginning to do work in order to get the train down. By about 3:00 the ride was freed and testing began. The coaster …

Hershey was kind enough to invite me out to take a spin of Fahrenheit for it’s opening day. A ride review will follow later tonight, I’ll just explain the 80 or pictures I took of the ride.

97 degrees and fallin fast. Lots of airtime to go around also.

I know we haven’t had a show in awhile, but we are finally back. This should be the last long absence for awhile. Anyway, in this week’s podcast:

Park and ride openings
Rumors
Off season work on coasters
Kevin’s Trip Report of KD, BGE, and SFA
and other news

Our RSS Feed, iTunes, a direct download, or the link to the right are the best ways to get our show.

Kings Dominion has started running their new commercial for Dominator and I have to, its kind of funny. You can check out the video below and then I’ll follow up with my comments.

At first I was thinking, “O.K. they figured out the neon effect for the camera.” But then the voice started and made it sound like an earth shattering experience. Side note, I would love to have one of those awesome “movie trailer” voices. It’s not a bad commercial by any means, I just found it humorous. Especially the …

This is one of the final picture galleries that I took last summer. I told you that I was going to try and space the releases out to cover the off season, and I went a bit beyond that. There are about 40 pictures in total. Overall I really enjoyed both parks (Walt Disney World kills Disneyland in almost every way) and I can’t wait to get back there once they redo California Adventure.
You can view the Disneyland gallery here. And you can get the California Adventure gallery here.

Back from my trip and I didn’t get a chance to go to SFNE (stupid rain). I did have a great time. Over the last week there hasn’t been a whole lot of news, other than parks opening all over the place. Ravine Flyer II has started test running and Erie Tube has posted a great onride video of the coaster. Is it me or is this the smoothest wooden coaster video ever (other than El Toro)?
The more I see of this ride the more I want to make the …

Sorry for not being around too much this last week or so. I just finished up with my semester the other day, and there has been a flury of activity going on. I am leaving for a week long trip through New Englad (yes I will be stopping at SFNE). So if the updates on the site are a bit slow, that is the reason.
The site also went down for a few hours the other day becasue of a hard drive failure in the server. If you noticed any posts …

I recently received a copy of Theme Park Review’s Coaster Expedition 10 DVD and thoroughly enjoyed it. This DVD features many parks in the Mid-Western region of the United States, and the majority of the footage was taken during last years Theme Park Review Midwest trip. Some of the highlight parks include Cedar Point, Kings Island, Holiday World and Kennywood. With POV footage of Maverick, Renegade, The Voyage, and much, much more.   

News Plus Notes took care of the Weekly Topic this time and the topic posed the question, “Does theming matter on a coaster?”
At a quick glance my reaction was yes. Theme adds a ton to a coaster, or so I thought. Then I thought about it a bit more, and of all of the themed coasters I have ever been on, I really just remember the ride. The theme might help to stir some memories, but the ride experience doesn’t change all that much.

Apparently Fahrenheit has valleyed, because it was caught on the webcam. Lots of coasters valley during testing. Even Behemoth valleyed, and that’s rare for B&Ms. Maybe the valley was a sign that they shouldn’t build near identical rides in the same park. You can see in the photo where the train was, and then they put a tarp over it.