Sean: This is a good year for the Californian Cedar Fair parks! Both Knott’s Berry Farm and California’s Great America are opening world-class coasters this year. HangTime is a Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster and opened at Knott’s Berry Farm this week as California’s first Dive Coaster! This is the park’s biggest coaster addition in the 14 years, and of course that was reason for a party!

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Knott’s knows how to throw a party, and with the perfect night-ride that HangTime is, a night time party was very appropriate!

Everyone is here! Ready to catch some gnarly waves on HangTime! 

There it is! The 150 feet tall Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster with 5 inversions. The color palate is perfect, because though the ride has a ton of supports, it does not look cluttered. 

Important detail at the event were the amazing HangTime cupcakes <3 

Appropriately the new-for-2017 Boardwalk BBQ restaurant that hosted the HangTime announcement last year was open for us to enjoy!

I’m going to throw in a few more HangTime facts before I discuss the ride experience later on! HangTime has the only beyond-vertical drop on any coaster in the state, and drops riders at a 96 degree angle. That’s why the drop is so intensely good, it throws you down at a wild angle.

Knott’s always does a good job getting the summer vibes going with one of the best beach-themed areas around. The Boardwalk is clean, colorful, and home to some of the country’s best rides! (Oh, and beach balls of course).

Knott’s is also one of our favorite parks when it comes to food. Amazing selection of food offerings, and the berriest food festival of them all: Boysenberry Festival! Needless to say, the food at the event was stellar too. 

Time to cut to the chase and discuss the most anticipated moment of the night! The HangTime opening! 

Knott’s Berry Farm slowly lit up the coaster’s amazing light package before…

A train rolled in during a ceremony with plenty of fireworks and amazing patterns in the light package!

We’ve been to quite a few ride openings, and night events always offer an amazing opportunity for a spectacular opening ceremony.

But Knott’s Berry Farm took it to the next level! The light package programming by KCL Engineering paired with the stellar fireworks made being a bystander just as fun as a rider!

In these pictures it should become clear that a very important aspect of HangTime‘s success is the ability for it to be such a visually stunning ride at night. 

And a pretty impressive action-packed ride layout of course!

The opening show was incredible, but what’s the ride experience like?

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The Ride Experience

We’re going to answer the above question right here! Let’s start with the first elements on the ride, the vertical lift, and the stall! The holding brake is quite steep and offers terrifying and beautiful views of the ride below and the surrounding area. The drop itself, due to being 96′ degrees steep (beyond-vertical), is the definite highlight of the coaster. Sharp airtime and a snappy landing, the best row for me is the back, where you are dragged down the drop most forcefully.

The following element is the top hat and sidewinder. The top hat allows for a nice rapid twist with a beautiful view of the park’s coaster collection. The sidewinder is the moment of the ride that appropriately has “hang time”! Though the airtime on the first half of the element is mild, the hang time on the second half is just perfect! 

The corkscrew on HangTime is certainly interesting, it’s a very compact element that, though fun, feels oddly manufactured/designed. As Knott’s would say, a Gnarly Wave on HangTime. 🙂 Coaster nerds will get a kick out of riding the corkscrew. In the following picture notice the green and blue chaser lights! Beautiful work!

But then the ride gets really good! The ride starts of strong and finishes strong with the third inversion being the snappy high-speed horseshoe over the station that is followed by a relentless double down into the smoothest element on the entire ride, the Cobra Roll! The Cobra Roll is perfectly banked, has some awesome head-choppers, and is very fast. The perfect element to finish the ride with, and of all the Cobra Rolls out there, one of the very best!

An important note for our lovely readers: HangTime is a solid coaster during the day, having ridden many amazing coaster around the world, it is certainly a great fit for the park, but a tad small compared to some other world-class coasters. During the day, I’d say it’s worth up to 60-90 mins of queue (UNLESS IT IS YOUR FIRST TIME RIDING). Now… HangTime is a completely different beast at night. A coaster you can not miss. The light package adds another dimension and makes the ride twice as good. Luckily Knott’s Berry Farm is open after dark quite a bit, so make sure you get yourself a night ride on HangTime, or like a million night rides. 

We are so delighted that Knott’s Berry Farm has another major new coaster in their lineup that brings another very unique ride experience to such a competitive market as the Southern Californian theme park industry. The ride is just perfect for the park’s lineup and audience, and we are so excited for the park! Make sure to ride HangTime soon!

Last but not least, we’d love for you to join us on HangTime right this moment! Digitally, of course:

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Thank you for checking out this HangTime report! Make sure to visit Knott’s Berry Farm this summer to check out what we call “the perfect Knott’s coaster” and have a great time! We’ll be posting plenty of Knott’s Updates soon!

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