Sean: Knott’s Berry Farm is a few weeks into Merry Farm now and after the recent Thanksgiving period construction of HangTime has resumed to move along rapidly. In this update we’ll take a look at the newly added track and supports, as well as what’s stored on the parking lot across from the park and some quick notes from around the park!
– Over the years, many of our images have popped up on other sites and forums, awesome that our coverage spreads, not so awesome that not everyone mentioned where they got the images from. We are totally fine with our audience using our images, BUT ONLY IF credit is given to californiacoasterkings.com. Thank you! –
Let’s start off with the fact that Sol Spin has reopened! It was closed for several months and has been reprogrammed.
The ride cycle is unfortunately still incredibly mild with 4-5 rotations and 1-2 inversions. I want this ride to get an insane European fair-style programmed ride cycle. Though I am unsure if the general Knott’s audience would like that.
Here’s our obligatory Montezooma’s Revenge mention, cause it’s ‘Zooming’ by in the background. 🙂
Silver Bullet remained closed today, the park stated that the ride would be closed through today (December 1st) on their website.
Silver Bullet will reopen this weekend after a quick refurbishment, crews were busy getting the ride ready.
GhostRider has reopened permanently from its recent refurbishment period and is running awesome, as usual.
Quick little fun fact for those that did not know, the horses that Knott’s owns for their stagecoach attraction live in stalls across the street, thus they cross the street to get into the park 😉
HangTime
Let’s get talking about the park’s highly-anticipated new coaster: HangTime! Here’s the current skyline of the ride, with the beginning of the Pretzel Knot/ Top Hat!
The supports for it are actually quite tall and bulky, which becomes clear when comparing it to the new Boardwalk BBQ restaurant building.
The drop was placed a few days ago, and was featured in our last update, but what’s new is the bottom of the first inversion that leads into the elevated corkscrew!
The bottom of both the Top Hat/ Pretzel and the transition between the first two inversions are both in place, as seen below:
The bottom of the Top Hat is quite elevated, much as the first drop’s bottom is.
The reason that the support behind it is so bulky is due to the fact that three major pieces of track will be attached to it.
There’s a whole lot of track ready to go up soon and stored around the construction site at this time. While we look a little closer, we notice that the bottom/entry of the Cobra Roll has been placed as well, which is the lowest point on the ride.
Last time we updated our readers on the construction of HangTime we noted that the supports for the exit of the Top Hat/ Pretzel were in place. The supports for the corkscrew have also been added and we expect the high rising track to be added soon.
The station side of the construction zone is a bit empty at this time, but don’t forget that several large elements will wrap around the station here, such as the exit of the Corkscrew, the Horseshoe and the Double-Down.
In case you missed our last update, here’s another shot of the lift hill that has been placed and the magnetic rollback system in place that will slowly and safely lower the train back down in case of a stall.
The ride’s station, as you may know, is located right before the lift and the construction of the station building has in fact already started. If you look in the background, parts of the final brake-run have been placed already as well.
The station building will look similar to that of Xcelerator. Completely covered and with a separate operation booth. The ride’s exit will lead into a gift store, which is on the far end of the construction zone.
Something to visualize, and that will soon become reality, is the track on the bottom of the first drop forming into a Top Hat that attaches to the bulky supports next to the new Boardwalk BBQ restaurant.
Here’s a better look at the bottom/entrance to the Cobra Roll, note the 5 feet height difference with the bottom of the first drop.
I first was of opinion that the bottoms of the drops look quite shallow and stretched out, be have to keep in mind that 4-car/row vehicles will be rolling along this track, which are twice as long as those on Monster at Adventureland in Iowa for example.
The following shot nicely shows off where the track pieces will be attached to this giant support:
Here’s another overall shot to piece together all of the pictures and details shared above:
When we move to the Boardwalk Ball Room area in front of the Timber Mountain Log Ride we get another impressive view of the new supports that have been added.
A thing we noticed, and that a reader noticed, was the dent on one of the supports on the bottom of the drop. Some construction piece/machinery must have hit the support. Luckily none of the paint has cracked.
Here’s a closer look at the support. It seemed that park officials were aware of the dent and actively discussing on the construction site.
It’s not terribly noticeable from a distance, so see if you can spot what support we’re talking about: 😛
We mentioned the gift store earlier, according to the park’s onride POV animation (which we have plugged below for you), this is the spot where that store would be located.
Here’s a final look of the newly added elements/track:
Before we wrap things up, let’s take a final look at the track pieces laying around waiting to be put into place.
There’s quite some track stored on one of the Knott’s lots across the street from the park, plenty to keep the construction zone buzzing for a while.
It looks as if the holding brake/ top of the lift is stored here as well. We wonder why they have yet to place that piece, but it could go up any time.
Here’s the POV of the ride that Knott’s Berry Farm has released:
Thank you for checking out this new HangTime/Knott’s Berry Farm Update! Thanks to Brian with assisting with the pictures! We’ll be back in the near future with plenty more HangTime coverage. For now check out our previous HangTime Update, our Knott’s Merry Farm report, CraZanity construction update and Holiday in the Park coverage!
Make sure to follow us on our social media for exclusive coverage! Facebook–Twitter–Instagram
Thanks for the update. Sooooo what will Knotts add in 2019, if anything?????? I would LOVE to see Knotts add a real actual dark ride inside the boardwalk ballroom. Knotts could ask Sally to redo the Knotts Berry Tales ride, or KOD, or simply use the animatronics in the Dark ride maze as a relatively easy way to introduce a new dark ride. And also if they could bring in a revive version of the Wacky soap box racers. S & S worldwide just announced a classical return of the motorchase ride.
What concerns me about the dent in the support is structural damage. If that support were to have a fully loaded car go over the track and support, what could happen is the support could buckle and collapse in on itself over time. They need to replace the support. At least the one place where there is damage. And they need to do this before they cement the supports in place or it will be impossible to correct the problem.