I'll give it to Hersheypark and GCI that Lightning Racer is one of the better pure woodies in the US. Also, the design and compact layout mean that capacity on this coaster is ridiculously low, so if you don't ride it first thing in the morning, you're stuck in 1+ hour lines to ride what would be a middling coaster in most other theme parks. Instead, it's a decent vertical dropping/looping coaster, but there are better out there like Mystery Mine, Hangtime, and most of the B&M dive machines. That's even before you consider the "Thigh Crush", which I'll admit was not as pronounced during our most recent rides 2 years ago (it was down for a big chunk of last summer due to a broken lift cable - big surprise for an Intamin).įahrenheit isn't a terrible coaster, but like so many Hersheypark creations, it could have been so much more if they had given the design team some more resources or more/better space to work with. For seasoned Hersheypark guest, Storm Runner is probably awesome, but for those of us that don't get a chance to ride it often and then hop on blindly, it can be an unpleasant experience. Storm Runner is complete chaos, especially in the back row where if you haven't ridden in a while and don't remember where to brace or adjust your body to prepare for each turn, it can be ridiculously jarring and borderline painful. Don't get me wrong, I-305 is one of my top coasters because of its intensity, but KD's gigacoaster unleashes that intensity in a rather controlled manner compared to Skyrush, especially after the re-profiling of I-305's first turn. However, as with Intimidator 305, Intamin pushed the envelope too far, and have created an experience that is just too much for the average coaster rider. It's an incredible layout that actually compliments Cadnymonium, despite them both being categorized as hypercoasters. It's like Hersheypark built the coaster using RCT, and chose where each element was going to go, and then B&M had to figure out how to make everything connect. Look at Great Bear next to Alpengeist, and you can see the clear difference in what B&M can do when they're not forced to kill momentum to line elements up in specific spots of the park. Great Bear is probably the worst B&M invert in the US (after Ice Dragon/Hungarian Horntail closed a few years ago) because of its awkward layout necessitated by the park's unwillingness to regrade sections of the landscape to accommodate better transitions between elements. I don't mind Storm Runner, and would probably rank it as my 3rd or 4th favorite coaster in the park, but it's not even close to my top 10 favorite launch coasters in the USA (and I haven't ridden Velocicoaster or Hagrids yet, so don't count those among my rankings). Also, Storm Runner was down for nearly 2 years because of typical Intamin incompetence in engineering, even though it doesn't come nearly as close to pushing the technical limits as some of their other creations. Yes, Intamin corrected for that error with better padded restraints installed a number of years ago, which is critical on Storm Runner and its rapid-fire elements, but it doesn't detract from the initial gaffe. Also, the initial design of the unpadded OTSRs was awful. Hersheypark chose to mesh a truncated version of a layout with inversions you'd typically see with an LSM launch (or multiple launches) on a hydraulic launch coaster. While it was standard for Intamin hydraulic launch coasters to have short layouts when Storm Runner debuted, there are far better launching coasters out there now, though most of them with LSM launches. Storm Runner's flaw is its length, or lack there-of. If it is RMC, let's hope they up the ante a little and get a bit more creative than they have with their more recent mid-sized conversions. My hope is that RMC is just messing around on Twitter and this is actually going to be the grand debut of a full GCI Titan Track conversion, where the company can pay tribute to their original design themselves and introduce an experience unlike any other out there. We have enough of those and it's probably not worth sacrificing the original GCI for another one, even if Wildcat isn't near their best work in terms of layout or ride experience. I'm in the camp of hoping this isn't just a standard mid-sized regional RMC. Haven't been back to ride Candymonium but it seems to be the headliner the park really needed. Storm Runner is a genuinely elite coaster and Fahrenheit, Great Bear, and Lightning Racer are all terrific complementary rides. I love that it's unique and features rides you can't get elsewhere, even if some of them (ahem, Skyrush) don't quite land. Don't really get the potshots at Hershey's lineup in here.
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