Is Dragon Challenge always a 5 minute wait?

asdfghjkl13

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May 22, 2009
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I went to IOA last Friday and it was packed. Waited over an hour for Ripsaw Falls at 11:30 am (which ended up breaking down so we couldn't ride), 2 hours for Forbidden Journey at 3 pm, and 110 minutes for Jurassic River Adventure at 1 pm. But surprisingly I walked right on Dragon Challenge, both red and blue! And the 5 minute wait was present all day! So I rode this ride 3 times, and it ended up being one of my favorite coasters (sitting in the front row)

Did I just get lucky or does this ride never have a line? I was surprised because the park was so crowded.
 
For reasons I still haven't figured out, this ride almost never seems to have much of a line. Maybe because it needs only to eat up 64 adventurous guests every couple of minutes?
 
For reasons I still haven't figured out, this ride almost never seems to have much of a line. Maybe because it needs only to eat up 64 adventurous guests every couple of minutes?
You should go during the heavy season sometime. I've waited in the line when it stretched back to the entrance of the castle. Of course this pre-Potter so the lines could be really long. The only good thing was...it was inside and out of the heat. I think what's keeping the lines short now is WWoHP and most people are looking to do Forbidden Journey and Olivander's instead of a ride that's been there a long time. Plus if WWoHP is at capacity, you aren't getting in. I wish you could get into Dragon Challenge w/o going through WWoHP. That was a mistake in my opinion.
 
It is true. Lately i havent waited over 5 mins for dragon challange and i wish i could understand why. It use to have waits longer than the hulk.



....

well... thats was around 2007-2008....
 

I realized that the line was probably so short because there are two different tracks, but still even if there was one track the wait would probably still only be 5-10 minutes.

Like the previous poster said, most people in WWoHP are riding FJ or shopping for wands and Butterbeer, etc, and this coaster has been around for a while now.
 
You should go during the heavy season sometime. I've waited in the line when it stretched back to the entrance of the castle. Of course this pre-Potter so the lines could be really long. The only good thing was...it was inside and out of the heat. I think what's keeping the lines short now is WWoHP and most people are looking to do Forbidden Journey and Olivander's instead of a ride that's been there a long time. Plus if WWoHP is at capacity, you aren't getting in. I wish you could get into Dragon Challenge w/o going through WWoHP. That was a mistake in my opinion.

:scared1:

I remember now the thread some months back about having an entrance to DC that was accessible from LC.
 
They also have an extremely long Que Line, So in reality you're 20 minutes of waiting... is walking that distance.
 
I've never ever seen the wait over 45 minutes for DC. Since the WWoHP opened anyway. Lately it's been mainly around 15...

The queue is MASSIVE though. So it's mainly just walking through all of it.
 
I'll put in that, to me, the entrance seems kinda hidden...if you're not looking for it, you might miss it
 
Maybe it has something to do with the man being injured on it a few days ago. Even if it wasn't due to a mechanical or structural problem, I'm sure it would raise some concerns in guests since it has been all over the news.
 
Maybe it has something to do with the man being injured on it a few days ago. Even if it wasn't due to a mechanical or structural problem, I'm sure it would raise some concerns in guests since it has been all over the news.

Doubt it. It's been this way for quite a while, which is amazing when you consider how awesome this coaster is. Recent incident notwithstanding.
 
I think there's several reasons why it rarely has a wait over 10 minutes.

1.As a PP said the queue is super long,you're walking for 10 minutes just to get to the line.
2.When they changed the entrance and queue for Potter,they actually made the ride stand out less,it used to have an awesome entrance with the fire and ice dragons outside the entrance,now it has a dull looking wall for an entrance many people might possibly even overlook,they also killed the interior queue,it's nowhere near as cool as it used to be.
3.It's not a brand new ride and people are more into riding Forbidden Journey??

I don't really know,I know Potter gets ridiculous crowds but I was there last month and FJ had a 75 minute wait and I almost walked right on Dragon Challenge,it does have good capacity with 4 trains on at a time,compared to 3 that many coasters like Hulk have at peak times.I think it's just a combination of several things,the longest I ever waited was like 1 hour plus when I first rode it the 2nd week IOA opened in 1999,the line stopped in the Ice room(the room that has the candles in the ceiling now).
 
We were amazed at how short the lines for Dragon Challenge were this visit, but our last visit years ago also had the same size lines. It is amazing since it is really a great ride.
 
Is it possible that the HP area was at capacity and only a small percentage of the guests in the area at that time wanted to ride? We were there last December and wanted to just ride DC and could not get into the area because it was at capacity...I don't know if they made any changes on how they handle that situation since then???

Love the ride and when we did go on it last year very short wait times... :)
 


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