Theme Park Discussion / Carowinds Trip Report

4/23/10

4:00PM - My friend Chris and I left NC State (Raleigh, NC) and headed to his grandparent's house in Greensboro, NC.
6:00PM - We arrived at Chris' grandparents' house.
6:15PM - Chris' grandparents cooked us dinner. Pork chops, macaroni and cheese, green beans, and chocolate pie for dessert.
7:00PM - We watched the NFL draft for a bit. Got to see my Baltimore Ravens pick up Terrence Cody (DE/Alabama), pretty excited about that.
7:30ish PM - Watched Man of Fire (with my man Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning). I enjoyed the plot of the movie (Denzel is a CIA operative who is hired by this wealthy American family living in Mexico to protect their daughter (Fanning) from being kidnapped. Some dirty cops kidnap Fanning and Washington decided it's his job to kill everyone involved. The constant flashbacks made it somewhat hard to follow, but the action was enough to keep me interested for the most part.

4/24/10
12:00AM - Went to sleep after battling my head which had It's a Small World and If you Had Wings playing inside.
1:15AM - Woke up
2:00AM - Went back to sleep.
7:00AM - Got ready to leave
7:30AM - Ate breakfast: Ham and Sausage biscuits and milk
8:00AM - Left Greensboro and headed for Charlotte, NC
10:00AM - Arrived at Carowinds, parked in season pass lot behind Intimidator
10:15AM - Got our Platinum Passes and headed into the park
10:30AM - First coaster: Afterburn. I love the theming Paramount put in when it was Top Gun. The ride is just incredible with it's terrain and path interaction. We ended up riding it twice since there was barely a line.
11:00ish AM - Next stop was Thunder Road. There was absolutely no wait, and they actually raced both sides. Our side won (since it is kinda rigged IMO)
11:15AM-2:30PM - Since I can't really remember estimated times, the next batch of coasters we hit occurred in the aforementioned timeframe. First up was Carolina Cobra. The line lengths were starting to pick up as we had a pretty decent wait for Carolina Cobra. I found it to be a typical Vekoma Boomerang with plenty of headbanging. Next was Carolina Goldrusher, since it's right next door to Carolina Cobra. Carolina Goldrusher was only running one train, so there was about a 15 minute wait. The ride itself was very nice for an Arrow Mine train, although there was not much seat. Then we hit up another Arrow, Carolina Cyclone. I found this Arrow Corkscrew to be extremely smooth with some good airtime. We took a break from coasters and did Drop Zone. It was alright, having been on KD's tower, it just doesn't compare. Back to coasters, on to the Hurler. This is one of the roughest wooden coasters I have ridden. No airtime, just a lot of speed, and headbanging.
2:30PM - Time for some food, since breakfast had been almost 7 hours ago. We ate lunch at the Jukebox Diner next to the Hurler. The food was pretty good, but definitely overpriced (~US $14 for a grilled chicken sandwich, fries, and a 20 oz drink). I would say the meal was only worth around ~US $10, but it was still good nonetheless.

This Trip Report will continue tomorrow when I can remember the rest of what we did, and fix any mistakes timewise as I'm pretty sure I messed it up, but oh well.

*boringness* 

Did you made pictures of the park? If so, post them, it would make your trip report a lot better!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera when we left Friday. That's fine if you find it boring, I just wanted to share my experience of Carowinds with ya'll.

tl;dr

^Was that even necessary??

^Was that even necessary??

A trip report is made to showcase the highlights of a park you have visited, this is done with pictures or with a small movie about it, you just wrote a long story and Sssammy's point stands correct, if you would have added 5 or more pictures in between the text it would be a very good trip report, maybe you can think of it next time you want to make one. Good to see an initiative from you Dark Horse, next time execute it a bit better and we are all happy.  

I actually meant to bring my camera, but just completely forgot about it in my last minute packing. But my friend and I plan on doing a road trip in August and hitting up a bunch of CF parks since we have Platinum Passes. I will definitely be bringing my camera for that, if all goes as planned.

Did you ride Vortex that day? Because that's where I work.

Top Gun: Yeah, we rode Vortex. I couldn't get the pedestal down far enough to where it was comfortable, so I rode either on my tip toes or not even touching anything. I think I'll take Shockwave at KD as my fav stand-up (since those are the only two I've ridden).

Did you ride Vortex that day? Because that's where I work.

Have you seen Dark Horse? 

I might have seen him one of those days, but I'm not real sure. I was there from 2:00-Close on the 23rd and the 24th.

Few people know what I look like, and I'm pretty sure Top Gun is not one of them. But my friend and I were at Carowinds on Saturday and it's possible you were working when we went on Vortex.