 Hello everyone, this is CoasterDaddy. Welcome back to another review. This review is of Steel Curtain at Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. This is a huge SNS Steel Coaster which opened in 2019 and is currently the tallest coaster in Pennsylvania at 220 feet tall. Steel Curtain holds the record for most inversions in the US with 9 and the world record for the tallest inversion which stands at 197 feet tall. In this review I will be discussing the pros and cons of Steel Curtain. Based on the ride I got in July of 2019. The announcement of Steel Curtain in 2018 was met with a lot of reserved excitement from enthusiasts, myself included. On one hand this could be one of the top new rides of 2019 or it could end up being way too rough for a brand new steel coaster as we have seen with a couple recent SNS projects. Personally I was really excited for this ride for the most part and it was one of my most anticipated coasters that I would be riding in 2019. It has a strong layout with many unique inversions and a couple airtime hills. Add to that its impressive structure which towers over the skyline and this seems to be a truly spectacular ride. I want to say that I did only get one ride on this unfortunately when I visited in July of 2019. Huge crowds and bad operations along with having to leave early made a second ride out of question for us. We ended up with a seat in the second half of the train somewhere around the middle. I really have to praise the trains on this coaster as they are some of the absolute best trains I've ever experienced. They do have a shin guard which may be an issue for tall riders but the cars are completely open with nothing but the floor of the car which is flush with the station floor, nicely padded seats, and a super comfortable lap bar. SNS really has done an excellent job with a design of these trains. The ride begins with the long steep incline up the 220 foot tall lift hill. The views of the river from here are gorgeous and you really get to take in all of your surroundings as you ascend to the top of this massive hill. From here you will drop down a bit and rise up into the ride's first inversion and main drop the dragon fire dive drop as coined by RCDB. This inversion turns you back the other direction with a funky half corkscrew type of maneuver before you plum at 197 feet towards the ground reaching a top speed of 75 miles per hour. The train makes a slight bend to the left before you rise up into the ride's second and third inversions the banana roll element which flips you upside down twice. It is very similar to a cobra roll but pulled in more a very rare element. After the banana roll the train drops back down then you hit the first airtime hill which provides just a small bit of floater following this is another really unique element a sea serpent roll flipping you upside down twice then you go over the lagoon with another airtime hill this one providing probably the best moment of air on the ride but it is pretty weak floater. After this you will go through a dive loop twisting you back into the other direction before hitting a high speed zero g stall which is on the underside of the airtime hill over the lagoon. After this hill the train goes up into a sort of step up before flipping you through the corkscrew very fast. After the corkscrew and turning around in the other direction you'll go through the ride's ninth and final inversion the cutback. Once again another very unique inversion. After whipping through the cutback you'll rise up into the ride's final brakes ending your 52nd 4,000 foot long ride on steel curtain. I will start my overall thoughts of the ride by saying that steel curtain is paced very well holds its speed throughout and is always throwing something different at you and offering many truly unique elements. This is a very fun ride and I think it is a spectacular ride for Kennywood. There really isn't much this ride has to offer in terms of airtime though. That shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise however as the layout is very much focused on those nine inversions. However there are a few moments on this ride including the two airtime hills that just don't really offer much airtime. It is okay floater during its best moments. That brings me to another drawback I think this ride has. The inversions here are all pretty fun and unique but most were very large and didn't really offer many laterals hangtime or positive Gs. This is a ride that I was expecting to be much more intense than it actually is. Besides the finale of the ride with the corkscrew and cutback inversions this ride doesn't really offer much in the way of positive g-force. You just kind of gracefully traverse the elements here and it didn't really feel like you were traveling 75 miles per hour either. That being said the speed you build with the first drop is held very well throughout the course of this ride and there aren't any parts of the ride where it felt like it was losing its steam. It just kept powering along right until the final breaks which was really good. On to the smoothness of this ride. This is the major thing many people were worried about from day one when this ride was announced. So how bad is it in reality? Based on my one ride I got in the back half of the train I unfortunately have to say that one of the biggest downfalls of this ride for me was how bumpy it was. Let me clarify a bit and say it was not rough or painful and the track seemed very smooth but there was an extremely noticeable rattle from the trains and it lasted throughout pretty much the entire ride experience. I am not someone who complains about a slight B&M rattle that many people are quick to point out. I've never had a problem with that type of rattle. The rattle I experienced however on steel curtain was just too strong to ignore. Even though it didn't make the ride painful it is very concerning to me as I was riding this brand new steel coaster just two weeks after it opened. Like I said I only got one ride on this and I've heard from countless people that this ride is extremely smooth in the front compared to the back. I even had heard that before I rode it so I was already prepared for bumpiness when we were assigned to the back portion of the train and we definitely felt it. Even my brother who I was with when riding for the first time went back to Kennywood more recently and he got another ride but in the front and he also said it was very smooth. So the smoothness of this ride is a bit of a mixed bag it seems but it is crazy that one half of the train offers so much of a different experience in terms of smoothness especially when talking about a ride that just opened a couple months ago. Take that for what it's worth. Like I said I only got a ride closer to the back it was very bumpy but also not rough and painful in any way either just a bit irritating because it is so new. Overall I enjoyed my experience I had on steel curtain. I very much look forward to returning to Kennywood in the next year or two and getting another ride on this. The other new for 2019 roller coaster I rode this year Kerwin's Copperhead Strike. I actually enjoyed quite a bit more than steel curtain but I was expecting steel curtain to be one of the best new coasters overall for 2019 before I rode it making it pretty underwhelming for me when I actually did ride it. Steel curtain is very fun though has fantastic pacing a very strong layout many unique elements and some of the best trains I've ridden in. Though it has some very disappointing marks against itself steel curtains positive aspects are good enough for me to personally give this ride a score of 8 out of 10. Definitely be sure to get on this coaster when you visit Kennywood. Just try to get it done at the very beginning of the day as the line will likely already be two hours long right after opening and I've heard many complaints about this ride going down a lot recently. This line never seems to go below two hours long either based on what I've heard from others so I would just get this done first. Thanks for watching my review of steel curtain. Do you agree or disagree with anything I had to say about this ride and what was your favorite new ride of 2019? Be sure to check out all of my other coaster reviews in a playlist along with this video if you found my review to be helpful like my page CoasterDaddy on Facebook and follow me at CoasterDaddy official on Instagram. Thanks again for watching. This is CoasterDaddy. Bye.