Re: Boulder Dash report

Boulder Dash is down again today. I was going today but I will wait
one more day, hopefully BD will be running tomorrow. Maybe something
happened to the track to close the ride. I am going to call later
to see the status for tomorrow.



On Aug 12, 6:27 pm, "Tim Melago" <rollocst_at_comcast_dot_net> wrote:
I had a chance to head up to Lake Compounce to ride Boulder Dash on
Saturday. I just opted for the after 5 PM admission as all I really wanted
to do is ride BD for several hours in the evening.

I'll mention how the evening ended first since I see on the LC website that
Boulder Dash is closed today. Just after 9 PM the red train was dispatched
and shortly after the yellow train rolled in and one family group was
flipping out. They said they saw sparks flying on the turnaround and they
were "injured" by the sparks. They were really being over dramatic about it,
shaking their arms and rubbing their faces, but they had no real injuries.
Now I can tell you that I felt something hitting me on earlier
rides...mosquitoes. That's all I think it was. I don't know how dangerous
some sparks are on a coaster but I remember in 1997 riding the CLP Blue
Streak when it put on quite a spark display.

The other train had dispatched before the yellow train came but when it came
back in everyone seemed just fine as they didn't know about the people
flipping out yet. Someone on the train did say that they saw some sparks
after being asked about it. Some of people on the red train joined the
complaint group probably sensing some chance to get comped. Maintenance came
over and they shut down the ride for the rest of the night. I'm guessing it
was no big deal but the park website did say that the ride was closed on
Sunday. Needless to say I wasn't too happy about the drama queen family act
which was enough to take away my prime hour of riding after driving all day
to get there. But the park had to do what they had to do.

On to the actual ride time I did manage to get, I was worried about the
track job on BD after some early season reports. I'm happy to say that the
ride was running quite well. It was much better than last year but that's
not to say I don't have some concerns.

Most of the track work appeared to be done from the middle of the out run to
the end of the ride. The new track wasn't rough but it was a little shaky. I
didn't sense much quality from the track work when I rode BD. It didn't feel
quite right. I think it could become a problem in the future. But for now it
works well enough. It didn't scream out "GCI track" which can potentially be
good from a thrill perspective but bad from a quality perspective.

The first drop felt like it may have had some work done on it. I'm not sure.
It seemed about normal. The next two sections weren't at their peak but they
were hardly bad or ineffective. But they could use some work.

With the track work I think the ride picked up some of that "mistake track"
extra airtime CCI became famous for. Several hills had a bit more pop to
them. This included a few spots on the out run, including the boulder drop,
and a bunch of hills on the return hill. The section before the boulder drop
was nice and an airtime pop after the boulder drop was even a bit violent.

The turnaround has regressed a bit to the original style track. So it's a
mix of some laterals and some maintained speed. Why it was touched at all I
don't know because it was worked on only a few years ago. I think the return
run is still as fast as ever. The dogleg curve stills packs a good punch.
They fixed some of the nasty roughness it was developing but don't think
it's doesn't have some attitude because it still delivers a nice punch of
laterals and airtime. One return hill has some very sweet floater air. The
lift into the little drop before the final drop is pretty intense. The final
drop itself is also better than I remembered.

Overall BD had some extra kick to it with plenty of speed. But some of the
new track work seems questionable to me. I gave the ride a pass last year,
keeping it highly ranked at #2, because I knew it needed some work. This
year it would rank only about a slot lower at #3 because Hades performance
this year was so impressive it jumped both Tremors and BD. It's been too
long since I've been on Tremors to say that right now its better than BD so
that comparison will have to wait until next year.

--Tim Melago


.

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