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Date Ridden: 1 time in the front car in January of 2007 and multiple times in other cars in January of 2008. Times Ridden: 5 Greetings again from the base of Lookout Mountain in Northwest Georgia. It has amazingly been a great winter of coaster riding with trips out to Knotts Halloween Haunt and Disneyland/Calfornia Adventure in October, Disney World down south in Florida for New Years and finally IOA, Cypress Gardens, and BG Tampa for MLK weekend. It is a blessing to have friends ready to attend these parks with and to enjoy all of the fellowship that goes along with it. And did we ever have something to talk about on our 8 hour journey back to GA.....without a doubt the most intense and scary coaster ride of our lives. If I have you hooked please read on... Most everyone knows the concept of the Dueling Dragons at IOA. This unique attraction consists of 2 superb B and M inverts which duel at various stages through their rides. The two coasters combine to make my favorite attraction in Florida but each coaster is in itself a unique experience. I am going to try to review each coaster seperately in order to focus on what each side.....fire and ice.......has to offer. With all of that said lets check out Fire first. After driving all night and visiting Kraken at Sea World first (see Kraken review) we grabbed some lunch and headed out to IOA for about 5 hours of coaster riding. We were looking for a lengthy wait on Hulk (which is normally the most popular attraction at the park) and the capability to ride the Dragons numerous times since the line is normally short. Amazingly we were able to get 2 quick rides on Hulk and them moved to the back of the park where the line for the DDs was approacing 40 minutes. Since this is a capacity machine with 4 total trains running, our wait was only about 30 as we wound our way through the lengthy que (wait times varied as I think they had some issues with the ride......we had 30 minute waits sometimes and would run around to get back in line and get straight on......it was really weird..we got in 8 total rides) and jumped on the fire dragon first. We rotated our rides back and forth on the two coasters but the ride I wish to focus on was our final ride of the night on Fire. After multiple rides, I think I prefer Fire slightly even though I will give both the same rating. With Fire you have a little more intensity and a little more speed without really losing anything in the dueling aspect. You get two superb duels with Fire (as opposed to 3 that are noticeable on Ice) and they are both excellent as you can see the riders below you on the zero g roll and the double loops sneak up on you a little more on this side. However, as the park was about to close, we were running around the line to get back in for hopefully one more ride. They had closed off the short cut, so we simply leaped the barricade so as not to have to run all the way around. We sprinted through the castle and into the loading area as the gates were popping open. We ran straight through and got on the 2nd car. There were only 4 people on the front and the two of us on the second car when a phone call came down to the operators and everything was delayed. It had been raining off and on all day and we knew that storms were in the forecast but we had no idea that a huge thunderhead had blown up. Suddenly one of the ops stated that management said to go ahead and send the trains as the last ones of the day. We were pumped as they sent us out to the lift hill...and into an unbelievable experience. For anyone who is reading this, I kid you not, it seemed we had entered a freaking hurricane! It was pitch black, the wind was gusting at unbelievable speeds, and it was absolutely pouring rain. I am still amazed that they sent us out into that. As we dropped down the lift hill, I had to pull my hoody over my face and keep my hands in front of my eyes because the rain was hurting so bad<
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