The most underrated coaster at Kennywood is Skyrocket. This is known to be a boring, rattly, pointless prototype. I would completely disagree. Today, I wanted to go over what the ride experience is like on Sky Rocket. I want to talk about why this is one of my favorite rides in the park.
The ride experience starts with the entrance. It isn't a bad entrance. There is a picture of a rocket blasting off. There isn't any theming in the queue, but you shouldn't be expecting theming here.
The queue for this ride is beautiful! Here's one of my pictures (with an Instagram filter applied):
There are plants around the queue, and combined with the blue track, it looks amazing.
Eventually, when you finish getting to the station, you pick one of 6 rows. There are 2 trains, and operations are pretty quick (usually less than a minute).
When you are choosing the row, you'll probably notice that this is one of only 2 coasters at Kennywood to have air gates. Despite what some people think, this actually slows down operations, but the operators on Skyrocket are quick. They need to be quick because stacking leads to guests having the sun hit them right in the eyes, usually, and the ride is less than a minute long.
When you are picking your row, pick the back. The front is also good, but the back has airtime throughout the ride.
You turn out of the station. There is a drop that is probably around 5 feet. This leads to the launch. This launch, which is slightly tilted upwards, brings you to over 50 miles per hour in under 1.8 seconds. This feels quite forceful. Then, you go into a tophat.
Going up the tophat is quite forceful. Going over the tophat in the back provides strong, sustained ejector airtime. This actually feels dangerous. You can get some good views of the stores near Kennywood.
After the drop, you go through the cutback. This doesn't provide any forces. After it, though, is the zero g roll. This is good. It provides some hangtime, but it will pull your lap bar down more if you don't stop it.
After the first 2 inversions, you go to the mid course brake run. I'm not certain, but I think that this is here because the rest of the ride may not have been in the original prototype. I think that it originally was supposed to turn into the brakes. That would also explain why they don't have any friction brakes, preventing it from being a block brake.
The drop off of the mid course provides more of that sustained ejector airtime. There are then some twists around that are quite fun, but they don't provide many forces. There is then a corkscrew, which does provide good hangtime.
After the corkscrew, the ending is pretty graceful. There are some twisting things. Those were originally planned to be airtime hills, but they didn't become those. Then, the ride ends with 3 bunny hills. These don't provide much airtime. There is some mild floater airtime, but that's about it. They may, however, make your lap bar come down more.
You then pop into the brakes. At this point, you are right near the highway, the queue, and the entrance. You can get some decent views of things around you, as it turns a couple times in the brakes.
That concludes the ride experience of Skyrocket. Please consider reading more of my articles. I post 3 times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 3 PM Eastern.
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