Headed out to Worlds of Fun for Opening Day today. It rained, and temps plummeted, overnight last night, so our plan to be there at rope drop was altered. Instead, we waited to leave home until i got up past 50 degrees.
We didn't get to the park until about 1 p.m., so we didn't have long at the park before we were butting up against Squeaker's need for a nap. But The Bug and I did get to enjoy the three biggest roller coasters she's ever ridden.
First, we hit Mamba. It's got a 205-foot initial drop and reaches 75 mph. It doesn't do any loops, but the speed and rise/drop sequence generates a really powerful sense of weightlessness.
Next up was a "classic" - the only coaster in the park that's still there from my last visit to Worlds of Fun back in the early 90's. We rode The Timberwolf, an old-style wooden coaster with a 95-foot first drop and the roughest, creakiest, ride in the West. It reminds me a bit of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, without the theming and with more up and down rather than spiral motion.
The last ride we managed to get in before Squeaker melted down was Patriot. That was the coolest coaster I've ever ridden. It's inverted, and includes a series of seven loop-type elements during its 2 minute 18 second duration - an 89-foot vertical loop, a zero-gravity roll, an Immelmann loop, an inclined banked curve, an s-curve, a corkscrew, and a high-speed spiral. It was seriously intense! And we've still got three more new coasters to check out on our next trip out.