Jarrett
Most Obnoxious Member 2016
Have you ever ridden a coaster, ended up not liking it, but end up continuing to hear hype for it and decide that maybe you got a bad ride and want to take it for another spin? Maybe your complaint seemed to surprise people who swear up and down that it never does that, maybe it was in a bad season, or maybe you were an inexperienced enthusiast that simply didn't know what you were looking for? I have a few...
Intimidator 305 [SINCE RERIDDEN]- This was literally one of the very first coasters I rode as an enthusiast in 2010 when I got into the fandom and while the mechanisms and hardware at work on the ride captivated me, I actually thought Volcano was better. As I grew into the hobby I realized that while a coaster is "supposed" to be good if it dishes out a lot of positive force, I quickly realized there are things I find way more interesting in a ride, and it fell out of my primitive top ten like a brick. But I keep hearing people rave about how it has "ejector," the transitions, and when I consider that it was still trimmed in 2010, I had been wanting to give it another go to see if I could maybe appreciate it a bit more. Sadly, even though I recently rerode it three times last month, it just isn't something I find interesting. If you like positive force, it's great. But in terms of violence and airtime, a little GCI could easily show this gentle giant who's boss. Best drop on a giga I'll give it that, but it's trash otherwise.
X2- I rode this on my first "proper" big trip (#VegasLA2014, the one that inspired me to do PA and NE and all that) in 2014 and my cousin was telling me all kinds of things about this coaster. So when we first drove into SFMM and I saw this big imposing black and red thing towering over us with all this complex mechanical crap going that was spitting fire at us, I could see right away why this coaster had stigma to it. Well I rode it and while it was the first coaster I've ever been on to actually scare me, it was god awful. That rack/pinion system, while innovative, simply doesn't work as well in practice as it should. There was all kinds of space between the teeth of the seat flipping mechanism and every time it needed to pull off some sort of major rotation, it violently bucked about three degrees each way as it flipped, causing me to slam my head against the hard seatback god knows how many times. I didn't appreciate being whacked in the head so many times by this death trap but every time I tell another enthusiast, they claim to have never had that problem. This guy Skyler I know from Facebook has told me that it has rotational suspension that sometimes causes it to oscillate on rotation but other than that, I've never heard of anyone else having the problem. Maybe I'd get a better ride on it in the future?
Nitro [SINCE RERIDDEN]- I keep hearing this is the best B&M hyper, and Emily heard the same but said it let her down. Well I rode it in 2016 on #NE2k16 and I was expecting at least standard B&M airtime. Nothing insane like Fury, but at least standard airtime like you'd find on Intimidator. The second I hit that first air hill I immediately wondered what airtime all these Great Adventure people were talking about. This was by far the worst B&M hyper I had ever ridden, in addition to the unrefined jerkiness you can get on an older B&M, the thing had zero airtime. It was like sitting in an armchair as we barely made it over each hill. I even rode it three times in the evening and it still wasn't getting us out of our seats. The thing barely even lifted us. Well I got back home, told people it was a weak ride, and found out that it has good and bad days. This year when I went back to SFGAdv, I was a bit sad to find out it was down most of the morning when I was driving over but when cleaning the park out with the Green Lantern cred, we saw it test! It had just rained and it should have been running well. Once we were all seated, Celia even told me, "don't get too comfy in that seat, you won't be in it very long." And again, it barely got either of us out of our seats and I walked off thinking it was still lame, so we went to Skull Mountain.
Intimidator 305 [SINCE RERIDDEN]- This was literally one of the very first coasters I rode as an enthusiast in 2010 when I got into the fandom and while the mechanisms and hardware at work on the ride captivated me, I actually thought Volcano was better. As I grew into the hobby I realized that while a coaster is "supposed" to be good if it dishes out a lot of positive force, I quickly realized there are things I find way more interesting in a ride, and it fell out of my primitive top ten like a brick. But I keep hearing people rave about how it has "ejector," the transitions, and when I consider that it was still trimmed in 2010, I had been wanting to give it another go to see if I could maybe appreciate it a bit more. Sadly, even though I recently rerode it three times last month, it just isn't something I find interesting. If you like positive force, it's great. But in terms of violence and airtime, a little GCI could easily show this gentle giant who's boss. Best drop on a giga I'll give it that, but it's trash otherwise.
X2- I rode this on my first "proper" big trip (#VegasLA2014, the one that inspired me to do PA and NE and all that) in 2014 and my cousin was telling me all kinds of things about this coaster. So when we first drove into SFMM and I saw this big imposing black and red thing towering over us with all this complex mechanical crap going that was spitting fire at us, I could see right away why this coaster had stigma to it. Well I rode it and while it was the first coaster I've ever been on to actually scare me, it was god awful. That rack/pinion system, while innovative, simply doesn't work as well in practice as it should. There was all kinds of space between the teeth of the seat flipping mechanism and every time it needed to pull off some sort of major rotation, it violently bucked about three degrees each way as it flipped, causing me to slam my head against the hard seatback god knows how many times. I didn't appreciate being whacked in the head so many times by this death trap but every time I tell another enthusiast, they claim to have never had that problem. This guy Skyler I know from Facebook has told me that it has rotational suspension that sometimes causes it to oscillate on rotation but other than that, I've never heard of anyone else having the problem. Maybe I'd get a better ride on it in the future?
Nitro [SINCE RERIDDEN]- I keep hearing this is the best B&M hyper, and Emily heard the same but said it let her down. Well I rode it in 2016 on #NE2k16 and I was expecting at least standard B&M airtime. Nothing insane like Fury, but at least standard airtime like you'd find on Intimidator. The second I hit that first air hill I immediately wondered what airtime all these Great Adventure people were talking about. This was by far the worst B&M hyper I had ever ridden, in addition to the unrefined jerkiness you can get on an older B&M, the thing had zero airtime. It was like sitting in an armchair as we barely made it over each hill. I even rode it three times in the evening and it still wasn't getting us out of our seats. The thing barely even lifted us. Well I got back home, told people it was a weak ride, and found out that it has good and bad days. This year when I went back to SFGAdv, I was a bit sad to find out it was down most of the morning when I was driving over but when cleaning the park out with the Green Lantern cred, we saw it test! It had just rained and it should have been running well. Once we were all seated, Celia even told me, "don't get too comfy in that seat, you won't be in it very long." And again, it barely got either of us out of our seats and I walked off thinking it was still lame, so we went to Skull Mountain.
