 I was fortunate enough to experience the legendary wooden coaster known as Lightning Rod at Dollywood very late in December 2019. I was able to get many rides on this day, night, front, back, and more. I'm going to be taking an in-depth look at the experiences I had with Lightning Rod and some of the pros and cons of this awesome ride. Lightning Rod is a wooden top or track coaster built by Rocky Mountain Construction which barely debuted in 2016. This ride had quite a rough start to say the least. Being plagued by constant downtime, making it a headache for enthusiasts across the world who would travel to Dollywood in an attempt to score the elusive Lightning Rod credit. It was barely opened during its first season, and eventually the front of the trains had to be redone to make them lighter, and the LSM launch to lift had to be altered as well in order to make this coaster more reliable. Though these adjustments sacrificed a little bit of the speed on that launch, effectively neutering the ride in a way, these adjustments seem to have been a step in the right direction as Lightning Rod has seemingly operated fairly consistently during the 2019 season as a whole and still provides an amazingly intense ride filled with RMC ejector air. I was at Dollywood for three consecutive days, and on the first day there, this is the first thing I rode after entering at opening time. I waited 50 minutes and got an awesome ride. I believe sitting towards the back of the train. I did try to get a night ride on this first day there, and we waited in line for quite some time when it went down, and they let us know it would not reopen for the rest of the night, at which point I believe there was about three or four hours left at least. So I got a bit nervous then, wondering if I'd be able to get any more rides during my time here. Thankfully, as far as I saw, Lightning Rod ran very consistently during my other two days at the park, and I actually ended up getting about seven rides altogether. I sat in the front a few times, the back a couple times, and somewhere in the middle once I believe. A large number of my rides were at night as well. I believe four or five of my rides happened at night, which was incredible. I also have to say, we ended up getting very lucky with where we sat because most of the rides I had on Lightning Rod, they were assigning seats. There were three of us riding all but one of the times, and we were assigned to first and second row about three times, two of those being consecutive rides. We also ended up riding the very last train of the night during day two and three. I really couldn't have planned everything out better. Now onto the actual ride itself. I actually really enjoyed the launch on Lightning Rod. It really has a nice kick to it, offering some nice positives as you are being pushed up that huge 200 foot tall lift onto the mountain. You'll notice that the LSMs don't go all the way up the lift, so a little over two thirds or so of the way up, you'll just carry the speed from the launch to get you over that hump. After dipping down roughly 40 feet or so, you then rise back up and descend into one of the world's largest drops on a wooden coaster, a 165 foot drop at a 73 degree angle. I have to be completely honest, I wasn't all that impressed with this drop on any of my rides. I thought this would be one of the best drops out there, and maybe if I had ridden it pre-2018 when the launch was faster, maybe this drop was stronger. Honestly though, I didn't really get any airtime on it, maybe a bit of floater. I find it interesting that out of the three RMCs I've been on, I prefer twisted timbers 109 foot barrel roll drop over the humongous drops found on steel vengeance and lightning rod. In any case, the drop isn't bad, and the rest of the ride makes up for what it is lacking. Following the drop, you will enter one of the ride's signature elements, which is this absolutely mental large scale left hand wave turn. And this thing is just nuts. It delivers that signature RMC sideways ejector air, and you're just thinking how is this even possible? It is amazing, but only the first of many amazing ejector moments to come. Following that, you hit these two low to the ground twisted bank turns, sometimes called the twist and shout, which give you absolutely insane sustained ejector airtime while banking you sharply to the left, then abruptly snapping you to the right. Both of these twisted hills provide incredibly strong sustained ejector air. Just as a warning, you better get used to me saying that, because following the twist and shout, you will rise back up onto the mountain side in a double up, which gives more great ejector airtime, which is basically just setting you up for one of the most talked about elements in a roller coaster history. You all know what I'm talking about, the legendary quad down, which gives you four successive moments of quick ejector pops as you are racing down the side of the mountain and just picking up more speed the further you fall. I did enjoy the quad down and it provides yet more great pops of airtime, but I wouldn't say it's as great as people say it is. It is pretty overhyped in my opinion. I was just left a bit underwhelmed because of all the hype the quad down but I didn't think it was one of the most memorable moments of the ride. That being said, it's incredible still, provides great airtime and gives you a ton of speed to lead you into one of the best finales I've ever experienced on any coaster. Following the quad down, you will hit the super high speed airtime hill, which is honestly an underrated moment on the ride that no one really talks about. You get flung out of your seat and you also get an incredible headchopper effect right here as you are passing right under the ride's final brake run. This is definitely a moment that was a bit surprising for me. Finally, to end the ride, you fly up into this heavily banked right hand turn, advertised as a non-inverting half loop, ascending upwards with full force, where you experience one final amazing pop of ejector airtime before hitting the final brake run ending your 50 second, 3,800 foot long ride experience on Lightning Rod. And I just have to point out when that train finally came to a stop, the upstop wheels that run underneath the track were just spinning crazy the whole time we sat on the brake run and while going back into the station. You could just hear it so loudly, the wheels spinning like crazy from all of that energy, and they were not slowing down. Just a cool observation I made. You can even hear the sound if you listen closely right here in this POV. If you can't already figure it out, I love Lightning Rod. I went in with very high expectations and I would say it met those expectations. It didn't exceed them, but it is one of the best and most intense roller coasters I've ever experienced no doubt. It is not a perfect ride, so I'm going to list some cons. Reliability. This wasn't a major hindrance when I went, but it wasn't 100% reliable, as it was down for a few hours at least the first night. Had I only had one day at Dollywood, I would have only gotten one ride on Lightning Rod and I would have had a very difficult time judging it. As I mentioned earlier, the launch had to be adjusted a couple years after it opened, and as a result, the ride now runs a few miles per hour slower than it used to. I've heard that there used to be airtime over the hump at the crest of the hill, but that is completely non-existent now. Also, there isn't really any good airtime on the main drop, and as huge as this drop is, it honestly just doesn't feel like it's that big. It is over so quick, and it didn't really leave a huge impression on me, but it doesn't really hurt the ride either. I will also note that this ride really doesn't feel that long, but it actually has a very solid ride time. Even though you hit 73mph and the ride features a launch, you are still getting a 50 second ride time from the time you engage with the LSM launch until you hit the final brakes. So length really isn't a complaint for me, but I do hear people say pretty frequently that it's too short, and in all fairness, I must say it really does not feel that long when you are actually on it, and I think that is just simply because you don't have that long seen it climb to the top as with a traditional lift. The ride does last for 50 seconds, and it really does a lot with its 3800ft of track. So once again, length is not a complaint for me, but just be aware that it may not actually feel that long when on the ride. The pros. Well, it's ridiculously fast, and it holds that speed very well due to how it uses the terrain to its advantage. The pacing on this ride is among the very best out there. It is also quite an intense ride. It has very strong negative Gs of course, and the positives aren't crazy during the whole ride, but there are definitely a couple moments of great positives for sure. Lightning ride is also very smooth, but not too flawless feeling. Let me explain. It is a topper track woody, so it is much smoother than a traditional wooden coaster, but to me, it's still very much felt, out of control, and wild like a wooden coaster should be in my opinion. I wouldn't even call it rough at all. Just a bit of an out of control feeling, which is awesome. That's another thing to point out here. Compared to the other RMCs I've experienced to date being twisted timbers and steel vengeance, those rides feel very controlled. Make no mistake, they are extremely aggressive rides with great forces, but it feels as though everything was perfectly engineered to where every single moment is incredibly deliberate and calculated. With lightning ride, everything is finally engineered, no doubt, but it just feels much more out of control and unhinged compared to those other rides, which I think is great. I do believe that a lot of that is likely simply due to this using the topper track. I didn't think it was too drastic how the two types of ride experiences are on the RMCs when comparing the iBox to topper track, but it was definitely noticeable. Lightning ride just never lets up and it finishes with a bang. Lightning ride has a pleasing overall theme and presentation. It is themed to 1950s hot rods, and you have a really nice hot rod placed just outside the entrance as well as some old gas pumps. The entrance is a queue building that is made to look like a service garage, which has another hot rod in there and various other car parts and things are thrown in throughout the queue, which overall just look nice. And of course the theme plays in very well with the whole launch aspect of the ride. Lightning ride is without a doubt one heck of a coaster that is really one of a kind. Awesome utilization of the mountainous terrain, incredible pacing, superb sustained ejector everywhere, and good ride duration. I'm really happy that Dollywood has been willing to invest so much into this ride to keep it running as best as they can despite the headache that it must be for the maintenance team. Right as I was getting reintroduced into the online coaster community a few years ago, before I had fully committed to coasters again, I read about this crazy new coaster coming to the park for 2016 and I was in awe. I lost interest in coasters for many years and I come back to find out that now we are getting a launched wooden roller coaster, which was mind boggling. RMC has done amazing things for the industry in innovating coaster technology and making things that previously seemed like a farfetched dream a reality. Lightning rod is a true testament to the creativity and innovation of the company and I hope this masterpiece is around, thrilling us for many many decades to come. All of you probably guessed this by now, but my score for lightning rod at Dollywood is a 10 out of 10. Though it certainly doesn't focus on delivering a huge variety of elements or forces, what it does, it does extremely well. I cannot say that this is my favorite roller coaster, but it is pretty close and I wonder if that still would have been the case had I wrote it pre-neutering. In any case, be sure to get down to Dollywood to experience this monster. Let me know what you think about lightning rod if you've experienced it and do you agree with what I said about the ride. Watch many other coaster reviews in a playlist which can be found on my channel, like this video, and subscribe for many more videos like this in the future. Like my page CoasterDaddy on Facebook and follow me at CoasterDaddyOfficial on Instagram. Thanks for watching, this is CoasterDaddy, bye.