Well, there is the fairly new Gold Striker at CGA.
GCI woodies, for the most part, fall in the good; but, not great category for me. They are always fun though. Gold Striker isn't offensive; but, didn't really have anything that stood out for me. Solid ride; but, not top tier. The only GCI's that have ventured into my top tier area are Prowler and Thunderhead when it was running really, really well. I never got to ride the Ozark Wildcat and that one may have been the best according to some of my closest enthusiast friends.
Everywhere outside of SoCal, where it's dry and pleasant 99% of the year, you have no control over the weather. When I visited King's Island, the forecast called for AM rain and cloudy for the rest of the day. That was one of the days allotted to park visitation, so off I went. It seemed safe to ride Top Gun, but then...the deluge, as that lady in The Living Seas once said. It hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think. At least not about anything but the pain.
Ah, the old Arrow Dynamics suspended coaster in the rain - complete with a soggy diaper.
Arrow, bless their hearts, came up with some of the craziest solutions to problems of their own inventions. Case in point - the suspended coaster. Take all of the mechanical bobs and bits that normally sit underneath the train and then stick them above the riders heads. Most of that machinery needs some good old fashion grease to keep running and when you put it above - let's just say that they quickly discovered how messy things could get for riders.
Have no fear - the Arrow diaper is here:
See that big bag hanging over the heads of the riders... just imagine that on a rainy day.
If you were "lucky" enough to be sitting in the front seat of any car after the first one on a rainy day... you usually would get a nice surprise whenever the train would make the initial pitch up to engage the lift hill. It's the coaster worlds own version of a Nickelodeon kids game except instead of slime it was a bucket of cold and greasy water.
The suspended coaster diaper did have a bit of another nasty surprise as lurking just beneath the surface was lots of hard steel bits to bang your head against while getting in and out of the train if you weren't careful.
Arrow Dynamics was just good old fashion engineering using a coat hanger and some creativity '80s style.
Of course, when B&M took the concept of a coaster beneath the rails and refined it with their Inverted coaster designs - no detail escaped their eye. Even though the inverted chassis still had a bunch of parts above your head, they shoved it well outside the reach of your head and covered it with a hard molded fiberglass chassis. To keep the rain from collecting up there, they have two little drains with a little rubber hose that funnels the water away from the ride envelope. Those Swiss.... they are so clever.
Still... I would love to turn back the clock for another spin on Arrow's original Bat at Kings Island. Although the Beast was my first coaster, the Bat was what created an obsession in me. Ironically, the only full circuit POV video turned up a few years ago and check out all that junk that gets dumped on the camera when it engages the first lift.
I don't really go out of my way to ride steel coasters anymore; but, one of my greatest coaster regrets is not listening to my friends when it came to the pinnacle of suspended coasters - Eagle Fortress. Too bad it is no more.
