What a fun ride! I had forgotten how fun this ride was. An awfully steep drop at 55 degrees, for a 1979 coaster! 125 ft high...60 mph. Lots of fun with a lively train racing the others. Lots of TPM here with the lap bars. I tried to keep it up by lifting my knees, but they pressed it down here. On this ride, it hurt too! You get modest airtime. A very fun ride for the 15-20 min wait.
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Well worth the wait (wasn't more than 20 minutes all day) - great first drop. Lots of fun slapping hands and passing hats back and forth between trains.
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Seems to be running well enough, except for an unexplained set-up on Saturday afternoon. Also, the operators kept almost stopping the train on the brakes just outside the station. I noticed the same thing at CoasterMania last year, but by August they were letting the trains come 'full-tilt' into the station like I remember it. BTW: That beam at the bottom of the first drop, when seen from the parking-lot side, is obviously just a gimmick. A very effective gimmick, but not structural. I never knew that...!
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A steel coaster on a wooden structure. It was rougher than I expected, and except for the first drop it's pretty boring. I rode this only three times in two days. The two good things about Gemini are that you can shake hands with the people across from you through much of the ride. And, with the throughput of over 3000 per hour (three trains times two sides) the line was at 20 minutes max, even on Saturday when the park was extraordinarily crowded. This coaster is good for a breather, or as a first "tall" coaster for smaller kids. Little-to-no airtime.
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Hey! This isn't a wood coaster! Neat mix of a wood superstructure and steel track. Much better aesthetics than a steel superstructure.
Massive throughput here, with three pairs of trains running. It was maybe a 15 minute wait for the front or back seat, and under 10 for anywhere else.
We usually rode this near the front - some good air, especially in the third seat. I tried near the back once and wasn't impressed. The drops were impressively steep, although only the first one had any length.
There was a decent amount of hand slapping between trains that intensified as the day wore on. The operators were usually good about starting the trains together, but occasionally messed up and let one out early.
Because of the short line, decent ride and the "racing", this was easily our favorite ride at CP.
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I like this more and more as time goes by. There's reasonable airtime, and some good drops. The Fine del Capos are still fun and surprising, even after 15 years of riding this thing! (I taught my Gemini novice sister keep hands up at all costs, and to boo when the brakes are obviously applied in one of the turns!) Best of all, there's never a long line.
CRITICISM: BUT, here's where CP pisses me off. They only ran the Blue Train. So it wasnt really a racer on Monday, which is half the fun. I mean, why chant "blue train, blue train, blue train" if nobody is there to yell "red, red, red" back at you? Supposedly, this is for lack of riders, BUT they did run two blue trains on the track simultaneously. Obviously they need less workers that way (running two trains on one track instead of racing them on two tracks), but I am starting to think that CP enjoys annoying me. I'd rather have only one set of trains running, but make them race!
They also started blocking off the last car on each train. This ride was NOT a walk-on. Maybe they think we feel the $25 is worth it if we have to wait a little or something. Some assertive soul complained enough that they opened the last car up instead of making us wait (we were at least 3 deep in line). But they closed it again later. Sigh.
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Blue train had problems in the morning and got set-up just as I was about to step into it :( But at least they kept the red train running. I got a lot of rides on this but only after dark did the riders get into the racing spirit. Then I got at lest 6 hand-slaps on each turn.