The new restraints were not painful at all, just very restricting. Of course, I'd rather have that than the freedom of MF's restraints on this coaster. Can you imagine the back pain that would cause with all those ultra-sharp transitions? I ended up getting five rides on I305, including three at night. My last ride was in the front row with a completely deserted train behind me (second-to-last ride of the night). The trims have clearly killed a TON of speed and I wish I could have ridden it before they were added. You don't really feel them at all outside of the front row, and even then, they don't pull on the train or actively slow it down, it just doesn't accelerate as fast as your brain says it should. That said, I suspect that I would have been disappointed even if it hadn't had trims. I can see why some people love it, but it simply is not my kind of ride.
Carowinds's Intimidator, on the other hand, was FANTASTIC! The airtime was crazy! It's not powerful ejector air or anything like that, but it's also not exactly traditional B&M floater air. In the front, the train slows down enough at the tops of hills to push you forward into the lapbar as well as up, and in the back, the air lasts about half a second longer than you expect. I felt for the first time in years and years like I was actually in danger of being ejected from the train. Some people will doubtless complain that the train moves too slowly over the hills, but I honestly think it enhances the ride. The second drop is a really nice twist on the traditional out-and-back form and it provides some interesting forces, especially in the back. The crossover turnaround whips the back rows beautifully and there is some surprise lateral air on the last drop before the final brake run. This is the kind of coaster that makes me wish we didn't have Mamba.
The other big difference I noticed was that KD was only running one train (theoretically understandable, given the very low crowds that day), and even though the line never extended more than a few yards out of the station, the wait was always at least fifteen minutes because the load/unload process took forever and we had to wait for the ride itself. Carowinds was running all three trains all day, despite pretty low crowds, and the wait was never more than five minutes, even for the front row (in stark contrast to Nighthawk, for which I waited a very long, very hot hour).
Has KD always been kind of a shabby-looking park or was it just me? I had always thought it had a pretty good reputation, but it just seemed like the sad, neglected little sister of KI. Carowinds has its ugly sections (Drop Tower/Hurler omg horrendously ugly), but for the most part, it was surprisingly beautiful and it felt like its own thing. Maybe it was the 106 degree heat, but KD felt like it was trying really hard to be pretty like KI, but it kept falling short.
