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Best Non-spite You've Had

Thekingin64

Thekingin64

Strata Poster
We've had numerous topics recently discussing various spites we have had as a community where rides have been unexpectedly closed. This topic is the exact opposite of that: What coasters did you expect to be closed when visiting the park but were actually open to riders? Same goes for children's coasters you expected to be denied but got on without trouble.

My best one for this recently would be Coaster Express at Parque Warner. While I had had the reports of how bad the ride is, I was still unhappy at the thought it would be down for it's retracking when I visited at the end of June. Luckily it was open and I got a few rides in! The ride is still rough though but can tell where they have retracked and is much smoother when not in a wheel seat.

(Apologies if a similar topic exists but couldn't see anything)
 
Oooh, one of my favourite stories this: it was 2014. As a 40th birthday present to myself I'd booked a trip to SFGAdv to ride Kingda Ka (plus other stuff too, of course, but getting the 'world's tallest cred' was the reason for booking the trip). Then Zumanjaro happened... and got delayed, and delayed, and delayed again... and while Zumanjaro was still under construction, Kingda Ka remained closed.
As the trip grew nearer, the margins got tighter and tighter and I started to accept the possibility that KK might not be open in time. Sure enough, on arrival at the park, a big sign out front said:
"Zumanjaro - Coming Soon. Kingda Ka closed".
Gutted.

However, at about 3pm that afternoon, we spotted a couple of test trains being sent out so we shimmied on over. 'Is it going to open?' we said. 'No sir, just testing'.
Even more gutted.

About an hour after that we clocked a train going round with people on it, so we shimmied over again and... holy sh*t, it was open!
We got our ride. :D

Shortly after that, about 30 mins tops, the ride closed down for the rest of the day and didn't open again for at least another week.
So fortunate, it felt as though the coaster Gods were watching over me that day, not least because while enjoying a post-KK cigarette in one of the smoking areas, we randomly bumped into 2 bearded goons by the names of Ian & Jerry, which in turn led to me joining this very forum. So yeah, a pivotal day in my goonhood, that was.

So that's my Kingda Ka story. Hope you enjoyed it.
 
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Lightning Rod in 2016.

The ride was closed ALL year. We had planned the USA-Live that year to hit Dollywood with the hopes it would be open. We started the live.. it wasn't open. We hit Kentucky Kingdom/Holiday World (day before) and we get news it opened for the day. We visit the next day.. ride it.. AND get ERT that night.

So we rode it on 2nd day of operation and got night ERT. As we all know, as temperamental as the ride has been, we're incredibly lucky.
 
I planned a trip to Castle Park as I really wanted to ride the Log Flume, found out it had some wiring issues and probably wasn't gonna be open for my issue, got a DM from someone a couple days beforehand saying it was gonna be open on the day of my visit. I show up and the ride's closed, but decide to walk on over to see when it'd reopen so I could be first in line, just as I walk over, the ride reopens and I immediately got on the ride (which later grew to get a 40 minute wait)
 
When I went to Warner Bros in Australia it was raining and a sign at the entrance said Superman Escape doesn't operate in wet weather - which was annoying considering that at the time it was a coaster I was particularly excited about riding.

So my friend and I went on other things while we waited to see if it would stop raining and fortunately, mid afternoon it did and Superman Escape opened which was a relief as it is awesome and we ended up having a few rides too :)
 
Pulsar in Walibi Belgium in 2017.
Our group extended last CF Live in France for an extra day to get all the creds in there, but when we arrived Pulsar seemed to be close.
Luckily it started operating later in the day (after what seems to be hours and hours of testing). I was really excited about riding a PowerSplash and once it opened I managed to get like 5 more rides on it <3
 
^Yes Neo! I was there that day! :D That's a good one, I'd forgotten about Pulsar. What was it, about 3pm when it finally opened?
 
Going to Nagashima Spaland just to find that both mice AND the Schwarzkopf shuttle loop coaster were closed for maintenance. Both mice didn't open yet they kept testing all day. Surprisingly, the shuttle loop opened 2 hours before park close, and that was rather shocking considering the launch section had been covered in tarp in the morning. Yay for getting a rare Schwarzkopf cred that I thought I would never ride!
 
This one is easy!

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Wonder Woman had some kind of mechanical issue while Ben and I were driving to San Antonio and our employee friend told us it would be down for a long, long time. So that's a pretty nasty spite we wanted to avoid, and even though it was unlikely, we did some switching around to make sure we could be at SFFT as late as possible on the trip. Everyone's watching our social media from my RMC Facebook group, some people are talking smack about it, even the park president was giving us bits and pieces in the group. Well on day 3 (which was supposed to be 100% Fiesta Texas) we bugged out and did SeaWorld that afternoon so we could be at Flags the next morning. After we get back from SeaWorld to SFFT...Wonder Woman sends a train! There's a worker in an RMC shirt messing with it in the station, but a SFFT employee tells us and the crowd outside that it won't be opening tonight but should be ready by the next morning.

Next morning, Ben and I are there at rope drop and what do you know? It opens up, we gate rush it, ride it once...and then use Ben's two Diamond Elite Flash Passes to hit it again! I thought we'd be lucky to get one ride on it but we got two! So glad I got to ride this coaster because it really is an engineering marvel in an incredible park, there's even a canvas print of it hanging on my wall now.
 
A mild but goony one. I just spent a day and a half at SFGAm, and on the first day I rode one side of American Eagle. The other side was not running and I knew I wouldn’t get it the next day because the season is winding down and it’s not crowded enough for them to have the coaster duel.

Well, I was right and I was wrong. They did only run one track the next day, but it was the other side, so I was able to check both credits on coaster-count.

Told you it was a goony story.
 
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Yeah, Eagle has been having a lot of one-side days. At least they both work, lol.

And @MestnyiGeroi I didn't know you were coming up here! You coulda given me a head's up and given you some nice fudge as well.
 
I was once told that Dragon's Fury at Chessington would "definitely" be closed during my visit as it had been closed for weeks due to major mechanical problems. Arrived at the park to find it open and running swimmingly!
 
I was told that if Goliath at SFNE was open (formerly Deja Vu at SFMM, the giant Vekoma Boomerang), run to it, because it's never open. When I finally got to visit SFNE this summer, I basically figured I'd miss that credit. While it opened a bit late, to my surprise, not only was it open most of the day, it hardly had any line. And it had a single rider line that ended up getting me a front row seat.

Even better, I head it was really rough, but in fact it wasn't terrible IMO (though again, I was in the front row, where that's apparently the least painful).
 
We were at Motiongate the day that Hunger Games finally decided to soft open for the first time, that was fab.
 
Snoo said:
Lightning Rod in 2016.

The ride was closed ALL year. We had planned the USA-Live that year to hit Dollywood with the hopes it would be open. We started the live.. it wasn't open. We hit Kentucky Kingdom/Holiday World (day before) and we get news it opened for the day. We visit the next day.. ride it.. AND get ERT that night.

So we rode it on 2nd day of operation and got night ERT. As we all know, as temperamental as the ride has been, we're incredibly lucky.
Click to expand...
By "2nd day of operation" do you mean the middle of June 2016?

If so, I think I can slightly top that...

22nd May 2016. We're in the middle of a mammoth 7400-mile 15-day coaster trip and arrive at Dollywood, scoring an evening ticket which allows you to enter again free the next day. There's no sign of Lightning Rod running.

Next day, we go back to the park to mop up the remaining rides. Still no sign of Lightning Rod running.

By 1430 we're on the shuttle bus back to Pigeon Forge to pick up the car.

Glance out of the window only to see a Lightning Rod train running.

With people on it.

Catch the next shuttle bus back to the park and thankfully the lovely staff let us re-enter for free, as we obviously hadn't had our hands stamped.

Turns out it's the first day of "technical rehearsal". There's a large crowd milling around the Lightning Rod plaza area but there's no queue forming and the gate is closed. There's a guy wandering amongst the crowd telling people not to line up and that tickets are going to be handed out at irregular intervals on a random basis.

Mrs. Flavors goes up to him and gives him the full sob story - "we're visiting from the U.K., we'll never get another chance to ride this" and so forth. Not only does he immediately hand over a couple of tickets, we're allowed to wait for the front row.

The luck involved was incredible. The shuttle bus was at the exactly the right spot at exactly the right time for us to see the train. And if we'd been sitting on the other side of the bus we wouldn't have seen the train at all.
 
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Small one but was at Hersheypark recently and saw Wildcat shut. Initially shrugged it off as had been incredibly lucky with all other coasters on my US trip being open and hadn't heard massively great things about the ride. Continued to Laff Track and Wild Mouse to tick those rides. Got off Mouse to find it had opened up!
 
When I tried to ride T Express in Monday, ride operators said "Closed For a Day"
However, I saw trains running and it suddenly opened! So I had 8 rides on T Express that day.
 
Went to South Korea's E-World (or Woobang Towerland as it used to be called) in 2007. The Boomerang was being welded back together that morning and was supposed to be shut for the day. But they opened it anyway. +1.

Honourable mentions to Cedar Point for opening up Gatekeeper with less than a hour from park close despite being shut most of the day, and Wicker Man for not breaking down on the day it actually opened until after I'd done it.
 
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