Mean Streak Reviews

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I'd heard some bad things about this ride, but they were only half true. I loved the first half of the ride...some pretty good airtime coming off each hill. The second half was boring...it would be much improved if they didn't use the trim brakes at the midpoint. The ugly orange lap bars weren't that bad...they *were* L shaped, and much more comfortable. And they didn't bother me about the height of the bar. Again...back of the train is the place to be. They lied quite a bit about the ride though. They claimed that at 165 ft, it is somehow the tallest and fastest woodie. I wanted to mention something about a Rattler, but I decided not to. One thing about this ride, is that it has one of the slowest queues for a wooden ride I have ever seen. The Blue Streak's moved faster. I can only imagine what it would be like waiting through the entire weave. :(

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Looks very impressive when you see it for the first time. On one ride, our train stopped about 2/3 of the way up the lift. The attendant came up the walkway and started checking our lap bars - the computer said one of the bars was not latched. She pushed a few people's bars farther down and off we went. Awesome speed, but the bottom of the first drop is kind of rough.

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250 feet of new track on the rise of the second hill. It's not screaming anymore, and (get this!) the track has been greased!!! So, this one is running smoother than ever. It's still a bone-rattler; and if they'd just get rid of the headrests, I'd accept the seat belt, seat divider, and ratcheting bars. I hate those seat backs that much!

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I've been fortunate enough to have ridden a few good wooden coasters. Coney Island Cyclone, Mr. Twister in Denver, the Big Dipper in Santa Cruz, the Grizzly in Virginia. Sadly, my "home park" of Great Adventure sorely disappoints in the way of Rolling Thunder. So I really enjoyed Mean Streak. A lot. Sure, it's rough. Sure, the 2nd half of the ride (after the "safety" brake) is pretty lackluster. But the first half is fast, and it really twists you around. Riding Mean Streak in complete darkness was also a treat. Curiously, some of the people I was with referred to Mean Streak as "Average Streak", which is funny if you take an alternate meaning of "mean" into account. I rode Mean Streak close to 25 times as well.

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Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! First off, it sure is an impressive structure. And the queue at the center of the track, with trains whizzing all around you, is nice. But the wait - even with three trains running, it took 90 minutes to get on. And the maze wasn't even full! Because there was no way we were going to suffer that wait a second time, we decide to wait the extra time for the back seat. Big mistake. Going down the first drop, we were bounced out of the seat by every seam in the track. I'm fairly well padded, so there wasn't any lasting damage, but several days later, my 13-year-old's back is still bothering him. After that shock, we just held on and tried to minimize the pain. I guess there's some good airtime in there. After the midpoint brake was a total waste. Nothing more than a zoomy ride through the structure. Why is that $%##@ brake there? I'd like to go back and try again near the front of the train. After all, there's got to be *some* reason people wait so long to ride it.

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This was a walk on. Shocking. It's still pretty rough, but riding in the center seat of a car helps a lot (thanks for the suggestion, folks!) If you can get past the roughness, this woodie has a great layout with lots of speed, drops, and lateral motions. not so hot on airtime. If it were smoother, it would be on my top coaster list, but I'm a baby about shaking my skull.

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2 rides both middle. I'm still sore. I've never held on on a coaster but I was temped to just to keep myself from being beat to a bloody pulp. Much better! This thing was tame the first year. It just keeps getting better and better.