#carowinds

Photo Sources: All photos are mine

Nighthawk at Carowinds!

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Opened: 2000 (Relocated to Carowinds in 2004) Closed: 2024 Manufacturer: Vekoma Height: 115 ft (35 m) Speed: 51 mph (82 kph) Length: 2,766 ft (843 m) My most recent ride: 2019

Starting off this whole thing is a ride that unfortunately closed pretty recently as part of the new Six Flags cleaning house. Nighthawk was a ride I was never very fond of. I always found it to be uncomfortable, rough, with bad transitions and even worse restraints. The main things I remember about it are the painfully slow operations and by extension, the really long and slow moving line you always had to wait in if you ever wanted to ride it.

Usually I enjoy flying coasters (or at least I've enjoyed the one B&M flyer I've ridden) but I don't think Vekoma really nailed it with this one. It was their first, and from what I've heard, their two others that came after, Firehawk and Batwing, do ride better than Nighthawk did. I never got the chance to ride Firehawk and have yet to get to Batwing though, so I can't speak for those.

The main reason Nighthawk comes up at the bottom of my list is that most coasters, even other bad ones, have something you can do to make the ride experience even slightly more comfortable if you brace yourself a certain way or something like that. You couldn't do that with Nighthawk, at least not in my experience. The restraints were basically light a straitjacket and if you were flying facing down and the train went up, you'd just get thrown into them in a really uncomfortable way. And if you're on your back, you feel the forces of the ride a bit more comfortably, but you're rattling against the seat back from the roughness.

A few pros for Nighthawk, because like I said in the intro post, every ride has at least something positive about it: Firstly, it pulled some strong forces. Especially in the loop you took on your back, the ride had a good variety of forces to offer. And secondly, visually the ride looked great. That bright yellow track and blue supports really looked nice and the ride's placement over the water right as you walked into the park made for a solid entrance plaza. But with it now gone, I'm sure Carowinds will do something great with that space.