Park 7: Carowinds

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Day 14: Carowinds

Carowinds is situated in a rather unique location: the park is right smack dab on the state line between North and South Carolina. Carowinds resides in both Charlotte, NC and Fort Mill, SC. To make things fun for guests, there is even a line that travels the middle of the brick sidewalk as you walk in, with a sign pointing to the separate states. Many guests use this monument as a photo op, and a lot of people can also been seen hopping back and forth right over the state line. Being the tourists that we were, we snapped a couple photos straddling the state line before we got down to business with our roller coaster riding.

My sister Emily lives in Wilmington, NC, and she made the ~3 hour drive up to Charlotte on Thursday to hang out with us on stop number seven on the Coasters for a Cure tour. Emily, Abi, and I actually visited Carowinds a few years ago, so we were ready to rock this park again! Looking at the map of Carowinds, we noted that it actually has 14 roller coasters, which was more than I remember from the last time…I don’t recall all the new additions, but I know for sure that Carolina Cobra and Intimidator are both new to us.

Brand new for 2010 is Intimidator, a 200+ foot hypercoaster that was themed to make it seem like you were riding in a NASCAR. Whether irony or laziness from Cedar Fair, this was exactly the same thing that Intimidator 305 did at Kings Dominion. The theming was so similar, in fact, they even used the same “Gentlemen, start your engines!” audio that plays just before the train leaves the station. The ride itself, however, was completely different; different design, different manufacturer, different track, and different trains. Intimidator looked amazing compared to the rest of the park, it towered over pretty much everything (except the Carolina Skytower). The ride was fantastic, and quickly moved up our list of favorite coasters on the trip. It provides a fast, smooth ride with plenty of airtime. If I had to choose a ride that compares to Intimidator it would be Diamondback at Kings Island. The Intimidator trains are actually the same as those created for Diamonback in 2009, which are four wide with the outside seats staggered back a little. Intimidator is easily the best coaster at the park, and we made sure to get multiple rides in before our day was over.

Making our way around the park loop we rode Afterburn, another solid coaster at Carowinds. It’s a B&M inverted coaster that offers all the same thrills that we have seen from similar rides along the trip…multiple inversions, high speeds, tight twists and turns. Afterburn is really a great ride, and we never had to wait more than about ten minutes. I’m not sure what the deal was, but I was totally surprised that the line for this first-class coaster was always so short. It certainly deserves more respect!

New in 2009 was Carolina Cobra. This was an attraction that was not around on our very first trip to Carowinds, but it was actually something that we had ridden earlier on our trip. It’s a Vekoma boomerang coaster, and the identical attraction was at Worlds of Fun with a different name. The ride was exactly what I expected, so there’s really not much else to say here. It’s worth riding if you’ve never been on one before, but it’s not really one of my absolute favorites.

Most of Carowinds’ other coasters are all pretty good, but nothing else really stands out as being awesome to me. Vortex is a shorter version of Mantis at Cedar Point, Hurler is a 16-year old wooden coaster that is starting to show some age, Ricochet is the same wild mouse ride we’ve seen at a couple other parks, and Carolina Goldrusher is an old school mine train ride that doesn’t offer a whole ton of thrills. The only other completely unique ride, Nighthawk, was closed. Maybe it’s because we had been riding coasters for two weeks, or maybe it’s because we’ve been there before, but Carowinds just didn’t keep us as excited as some of the other parks. We spent a decent amount of time getting extra rides in on Intimidator, which I still think is an extremely good ride. Carowinds and its fans should be thrilled to have such a high quality coaster at their park!

Since it was the middle of summer in the Carolinas, it was hot, humid, and the sun was scorching. The temperature was in the mid-90s, so that afternoon we swapped out our roller coaster riding clothes for some swim trunks and headed over to Boomerang Bay. The first thing we noticed was the huge crowd at the water park, which I guess was to be expected. Lines for the first couple water slides we saw were completely full, meaning it would be a 45-60 minute wait for a ~30-second ride. I’m not a huge fan of water parks already, and my wife and sister also didn’t like the sound of waiting that long for some water slides. Instead of waiting for a short ride, we decided to get the biggest bang for our buck and wait for the lazy river (which is actually called Crocodile Run at Carowinds). We enjoyed our nice, leisure float through the water and had some time to cool down, which was really the goal.

One disappointment that we had in the park this year was the missing Nickelodeon Flying Super Saturator. You might call the Flying Super Saturator a “water coaster,” where riders get wet during the ride. As a twist, each rider also had a reservoir with four gallons of water that he could use to drench unsuspecting guests waiting in line, and even some outside the ride area! In return, there were also a few water canons setup that spectators could used to soak the riders. It was a really neat concept, and we really missed our opportunity to ride it again. Personally, I’m not sure the the Carolina Cobra replacement was worth it…

Overall we enjoyed our time at Carowinds. Being able to ride Intimidator made the trip worth it, and Afterburn was icing on the cake. I think if I only rode those two ride all day I could be satisfied! Thanks Carowinds, for letting us stop by.

Ride List (*indicates roller coaster)

• *Afterburn
• Boo Blasters on Boo Hill
• *Carolina Cobra
• *Carolina Cyclone
• *Carolina Goldrusher
• Carolina Skytower
• Crocodile Run
• *Flying Ace Aerial Chase
• *Hurler
• *Intimidator
• *Ricochet
• Rip Roarin’ Rapids
• *Thunder Road
• *Vortext
• Whitewater Falls
• *Woodstock Express