|
Its a bird! Its a plane! Its.... a bust? Towering over everything in the park is Superman Ride of Steel. Just about any coaster of this size is still very impressive even with the Top Thrill Dragsters of the world starting to make their niche in the coaster world. With the height and the magnitude of this ride you would expect a superior ride; one that has the potential to blow other coasters out of the proverbial water. I say blah, and I will tell you why. It all starts off in the station, which is basically a game of chance. Will you be stapled into you seat or will you not be? Being stapled completely kills the entire ride experience and is pretty uncomfortable. I figured that being stapled would have killed the ride a little more than what it did, but it really didnt and I will explain why in a moment. First came the first drop. A fairly good first drop in the back - not good at all in the front. After the drop there is a banked turn to the right which kind of reminded me of the days of Hercules, but of course that kind of design can be done with steel and an Intamin train. The turn was close to the ground and pretty intense. The second hill did not provide any kind of airtime, but that was expected because it was a high hill and was a set up for the speed for the rest of the ride. The rest of the ride is where my dislike for this ride really kicked in. There were areas of straight track that just killed the ride. There was straight track going into and out of the two helices that really could have been done without. Those pieces of straight track really killed the ride. They were low to the ground and not exciting at all. Very very very boring. The third hill of the ride (the one coming out of the first helix) is the lone high point of the right if you are not stapled into your seat. I had the experience of taking this hill both stapled and unstapled and the difference was very clear. Unstapled: The ride provided a hint of good airtime but I could just tell that there was a lot more there. Stapled: This was the single greatest moment of airtime that I have experienced. Two things come into play with that though: 1. You dont know if you are going to be stapled or not which really makes or breaks that hill and 2. One great moment of airtime, no matter how excellent it is, does not make a ride. The bunny hills going into the station were pretty good. There were not a lot of them and the brakes into the station was weird because there really wasnt a brake run and the train hits the brakes right after the last little hill. One of the hills going in is also very heavily trimmed and is very noticeable. That last little pop of air that could be there to make for a good ending is not there because of that. Now, I guess it is time the make the unavoidable comparison between this and the hyper coaster in New England of the same name, but different layout. This coaster is based purely on speed. That is the thing that really kills the ride for me because it is hard to base a ride on speed considering it really isnt going all that fast when the speed of the ride is supposed to be exploited. The other Superman is full of airtime and speed which makes it far superior to this version. The mix of what that ride throws at you really make me appreciate it a lot more. The one extreme moment of airtime on this coaster really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Lastly, I was really disappointed with this ride and that is really sad to me because I really liked the basic layout of this coaster a lot better than the other one. It is wide spread and not jumbled up like the other one. However, the layout is not executed correctly. Things were missing and the space could have been used more accordingly. One last little thing is that there was a slight shaking on this ride whereas the other seemed to be much smoother. But, of course, I only really felt that rattle on the parts of straight t
|