“Oh my…,” I finally got to ride Kingda Ka on the 9/23/05 Season Pass Day after seeing it closed on one occasion, and having a 5 or so hour line on the other. It’s an impressive and imposing structure up close, and in line you are treated with watching car loads of people being shuttled off to the exosphere. Seeing the flywheel in action was also pretty cool. Unfortunately this ride breaks down a lot, twice when I was in line actually (and both times were when I was in the seat queues!) It sort of killed the anticipation but after the ride, all that didn’t matter.
I jumped into the seat, pulled my harness down as far as it would go, buckled up, and I was ready to sail. The anticipation that was killed in line due to the breakdowns was replaced with “oh my…” as the train stopped at the launch area. Then came the voice over of the man with the annoyingly perfect voice saying: “head back, arms down, hold on.” I personally thought it would have been great if the voice over went: “AAAH! GET AWAY FROM ME,” immediately followed by the launch.
The train rolls back, engages, short pause, and then the train is thrusted up the track. I got an excruciating stomach dropping type of feeling during the launch which was 10x worse than what the Chiller offers. Next came the huge vertical trek up the tower. Over the top you get a view that is unmatched by any other SFGAdv coaster (and any coaster at many other parks as well.) The spiral downward was incredible; possibly the coolest scene you will ever see on a coaster with the track twisting around like it does. The camelback was more fun than scary or intense really. I liked how I was off the seat for the whole camelback until the train skidded into the brakes. “OH MY…,” was again thought at the end of the coaster which basically summed it up.
It’s big, it’s fast, it’s intense, it’s fun, and it was WELL worth the 40 minute wait plus two breakdowns. As a side note, I went on it a second time later that night and it also succumbed to a breakdown with a “rain delay” at the same time. Luckily the rain stopped quickly. It wasn’t much rain but I like to think that at 125mph that a raindrop would leave a crater in your face.
EDIT: El Toro now takes #1 on my list. My impulse thoughts on this coaster drove it up my top ten list almost as fast as its launch. KK now resides in the middle of my Top Ten list. I also dropped its rating from 10 to 9.
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