Since we knew the weather was going to be nasty in the morning, but nice in the afternoon Valerie and I decided to sleep in and planned on going to the park later in the day. We weren't planning on making a full day out of our visit. Mainly we just wanted to ride some of the coasters, see some of the off-season improvements, and get as good of a look at Prowler as we could without treading in to forbidden areas. We ended up arriving at the park around 3:30 pm, and our first stop was Patriot The wait for the front row was about 20 minutes, and the rest of the rows seemed to be no more than 10 minutes. One thing that always bugs me is when they don't have the front line open. When they don't open up that line it usually ends up blocking the turnstile for the entrance to the rest of rows. Because it was blocking the view of rows 2-4 more folks were getting in line for rows 5-7, and as a result we saw several trains leave with a much lower capacity than it could have handled causing longer than necessary waits for rows 2-7. As to the coaster itself, it is still just as fun as the first time I rode it. It was running really well, and I heard very little of the clanking that I noticed during some of my rides last season. I have always tried to compare Patriot to Silver Bullet because my first rides on both occurred within a week of each other. I used to think I liked Silver Bullet a little more, but after my most recent ride on Silver Bullet a few weeks ago I can safely say I think we have the better coaster.
Next, we headed over to the coaster I was looking forward to riding again the most over the off-season,Timber Wolf. Last year I probably rode Timber Wolf more times than any other coaster in the park. I had also become somewhat of a cheerleader for it because I felt it got a lot of unwarranted negative criticism. The improvements they did in the previous off season really helped smooth it out and breathed some new life in it. On our one and only ride on it for the day we waited about 5 minutes to ride in the 3rd row from back. While the sections of track that were replaced this year were noticeably smoother, it seemed to be running a bit slower overall. Valerie was actually the first to say something that it seemed slower than last year. This confirmed to me that it wasn't just my imagination. I don't know if the trims are on too high, if the new track needs to broken in, or if I just had my expectations built up too high over winter. Either way, I am hopeful the speed will improve over the season.
Since Valerie hadn't seen any of the Prowler construction progress in person, we took a ride on the Worlds of Fun Railroad. After we boarded the train we ended up just sitting for 10 minutes before we started moving. It wasn't an issue of a bunch of people coming through turnstiles and waiting for the train to fill up. The line cutoff 5 minutes before we left the station. I think old Eli was having some issues. When we did get going the highlight of course was taking a loop around Prowler. I hadn't seen it in person for about 5 months and it looks like it is going to be fantastic. I think I will probably ride Eli just as often as I did last year just to get some fun looks at Prowler while it is running.
After our ride on the Railroad we went over to the Africa section to ride our last coaster of the day, Mamba. We waited for about 20 minutes for the back row of car two (row 6). The Mamba crew seemed to be lacking some enthusiasm compared to last year, but hopefully our friend Matt at Coaster Community can fix that. The ride itself was awesome as always. After going after about 5 months without riding this hyper it felt almost like a new experience. I had forgotten just how much air-time there is. Additionally, the mid-course brake run didn't seem to be slowing the train down too much which made the bunny hills on the return run more fun than usual.
After riding Mamba we realized we were indeed holding on tight (to our stomachs) and that we needed a bite. As such, we headed over to Coasters Drive-In and grabbed a vanilla shake. The rest of the day was spent walking the park and checking out other off-season improvements in addition to the ones made to Timber Wolf as well as adding Prowler. The most notable improvement I could see was the new paint for the Le Taxi Tour building. This has made it look like it is a new addition to the park. Norseman's Nicities has been given a makeover and is now The Lift. This store seems to be geared towards teens by selling brands such as Hurley, but it also has a nice mix of Worlds of Fun branded items as well. Since I smoke I also noticed that there were a few more smoking areas added to the park. This seemed a little odd to me since most parks are reducing how many smoking areas they have, and I never felt the park was lacking in this department. Additionally, I have been informed that the midways and the entrance plaza will receive a new layer of asphalt sealant over the course of the next couple of weeks. There were some "behind the scenes" improvements as well that can be seen on the Unofficial Worlds of Fun blog.
Overall, we had a nice time on our short 3 hour opening day visit. I look forward to many more visits this season. My next visit with be on May 1st for the Prowler Season Pass holder/Media Day preview. Until then, take a look at my pictures from my visit in my Gallery, or on Facebook.