Paramount’s Carowinds 2004

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Paramount’s Carowinds | Photos | Videos

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May 14, 2004
Charlotte, NC

I’d known for months that I would be visiting Carowinds in May as I would be in NC for the weekend of the 14 so I made plans with my good friend (and then roommate) Jon to go again as we had the year before. It had been announced that the park would be adding the world’s first Star Trek themed ride, which would be opening in May and as a Star Trek fan, I was excited. That I had ridden a near clone of the ride already and had enjoyed it made me even more excited to ride.The original plan called for Jon to head out to NC and spend the week with friends, and he and his friends would meet up with me on Friday at the park, after which he’d head back to Salisbury with me for the weekend.

As the beginning of May rolled around, though, Jon realized that he lacked the funding to travel to NC for a  day, much less a week, so I was without a riding partner as all my other friends weren’t going to be able to make it till Friday evening. That same week Andy Wong messaged me on CoasterBuzz to let me know that he too would be at Carowinds on the 14th, and wanted to know if I wanted to meet up to meet in person and hang out, and of course I said yes. We spent the 2 weeks before making plans over instant messenger and phone. Finally it was the day before the trip. I called and made final plans to meet Andy at the front gate. We were to meet at the park, but if one of us got there signifigantly early, that person was to get in line for BORG, and we’d meet up after we both rode.

That morning at 4 AM I woke up, got ready, went in to town to gas up, and at 5 AN headed out from the tiny town in WV where I reluctantly called home for the North Carolina sun. I had planned to stop around 6 AM for breakfast in WV, but the place I had wanted to get breakfast at hadn’t opened yet. I put off breakfast for a while, and decided to head for the interstate.

Paramount’s Carowinds 2003

Paramount’s Carowinds | Photos | Videos

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June 9, 2003
Charlotte NC

It had been since May of 1999 on one of my senior trips since I’d last been to my former home park, Paramount’s Carowinds/ And since I felt the need for a Top Gun fix I planned a trip to North Carolina and added Carowinds to the list of stops. I left home on Thursday around 5 PM when my friend Jon came to picked me up. It was a 5 hour trip to my parent’s place. We arrived around 11 PM that nite and stayed up watching TV, knowing full well I was too excited to go to bed.

The next morning we woke up and headed south around 7 AM. After an hour we stopped for breakfast then found our way to the interstate heading straight to carowinds Carowinds. The drive was nice, weather was great, traffic flowed nicely, and around 11 AM we got past Charlotte and went looking for coupons at Wendy’s and Bojangles near the park.

We pulled into the parking lot and noticed school busses. I had been warned of this already that it was Math, Science, and Physics day at the park, but there were slightly less busses than what I’d imagined. I was glad to see the regular parking lot fairly empty so we went and paid to get in. Once we got inside the park I noticed that it wasn’t too crowded. In fact, we had decided to head to Top Gun first but, upon passing by the new Runaway Reptar and seeing a VERY small line, we couldn’t resist passing by.