The Official "TPR MidWest USA 2007" Trip Thread!

^I think we were all in too much shock to video or take pictures...perhaps Cora can sketch it out for us!

OMG! YES! I totally will!! The image of that water stopping is one of the strongest one of the trip for me! A comic is a must!

Great memories. There are probably a number of pictures of the pink waterside incident, I think five or six people were taking photos as Robb & company came down, it's just a matter of finding them amongst the 44,000 Robb has collected.

YAYY!!

You're back in business!!!!

I am seriously cracking up right now. That's hillarious.

I can't wait for Cora's sketch!

I never told you Cora, (actually, never really talked to you, lol) but your Wes sketch was flat out AMAZING!

^ THANKS! That Wes one was the first I did on the trip and spent the most time on.

I won't be able to post anything until Friday because of a lack of scanner, but it'll be up!

Holy crap...I was not even there and I can totally picture the slide story...(I am still laughing as I type this). I am sure the people on the actual raft thought they were going to die (thank god they did not). Glad y'all had a good time. Looking forward to next year's trip because I WILL BE THERE!!!!

Great report, that water slide story is classic. Love to have seen that .

Seems more and more of these water slide reports are appearing as they are great fun, could be a new section.

The waterslide story is outstanding, I only wish to see videos or pictures of the incident.

great update, I'm pumped for Avalanche!!!

That waterslide story is so funny!

Ahh... those waterslides. The Pink one wasn't that bad, the Yellow one on the otherhand...

Jay (ElToroExtreme), Taylor (TwisterII) and Jacob (JCGoldCoast) went on the yellow one together.

The turns on that slide were very tight so we went beyond 90° on most of them.

One of the turns during the middle of the ride (And I heard a lot of people had the same problem) caused Jay to fly towards me... he was sitting directly across from me.

Thank god I moved my head out of the way, because if I didn't, I would have his teeth marks permanently scared on it.

Instead, his teeth landed on my left shoulder. It left two wounds. An interesting experience to say the least.

I believe he has a picture of it, I'll see if he can upload it here.

- Mike "If anyone needs Jay's identification, I have it on my shoulder" Redig

Hooray! The Dells still pwn all. And yes, that second turn on Avalanche is the 'OMG MY SPINE JUST GOT SHOVED OUT MY ASS' turn. But it's still fun.

Sorry I couldn't go. Stupid 5 hour football practices.

Robb's working on the SFGAm Update...it's coming...

Ok...since Robb is busy picking Lou up at the airport, allow me to bring you today's update!

Today we were at SFGAm! One of the nicest SF parks in the chain with a lot of great rides. We knew today would be a short and busy day so we planned ahead and arranged Gold Qbots for the group! We got in groups of four the night before along with some Qbot School and were ready to go. Let me just say, GOLD QBOTS ARE AWESOME!

We arrived at the park at 8:30am and got ready for ERT on Raging Bull, Viper, and Giant Drop. It was really great ERT with three trains on Bull, two on viper, and all sides of Giant Drop. You could just park yourself on Bull (Even the front and back seats!) and never get up!

After ERT we passed out the Gold Flashpasses, gave everyone a quick speech on what to hit (Deja, Demon, and the Mouse ASAP as they were not on Flashpass) and went out of Southwest Territory.

We saw numerous groups throughout the day praising the Qbot! Superman had at least a 2 hour line for the General Public, or 4 minutes for us! Most everyone got all the credits, or at least the credits they cared about. Then the rain hit! A big storm that would find us the next day at CP as well. We decided to leave at 4pm for our long drive to CP.

All in all, it was a great day at SFGAm and aside from the stupid hard trims on Bull everything was running great!

On to the pictures!

More happy Whizzer riders. Thanks SFGAm for not taking this ride out! And thanks for a great day! Gold Qbot rules!!!

Beer Delivery Guy also approves of Whizzer!

Of course they will fit...if these two wedged their fatasses in it's not a problem for any human! What was Robb's obsession with cramming his ass on other unsuspecting men on this trip???

GJ loves Whizzer, while Louis and Joke wonder if they will fit...

Tex and Chris are exhausted.

Chuck is amazed at the SF ride op hurrying.

Wes...well, Wes is just Wes.

(Photo by Jahan)

Ahhh, they're showing off their kickass TPR Tattoos!!!

Hmmm what are they doing? Is this some new signature move? Am I supposed to photoshop Mickey Mouse in there?

Iron Wolf...ouch.

This picture needs Terry popping out from behind!

Jay's Superman hair says "thanks to Qbot we only waited 30 minutes for the front seat instead of 3 hours!"

Had I known they were only letting two adults ride I might have actually gone on the spinning mouse! Oh wait...No.

The final section of queue for the Mouse reminds me of a bad Brady Bunch episode...

Evil Soccer Mom is either checking out David's ass, or thinking about stealing one of his Qbots!

They use the new LoQ technology where you no longer have to go to the ride to reserve it. You just scroll through on your Qbot and pick your ride and it tells you what time you can go! As soon as the rideop scans you you can queue up your next ride (even before you get on the current one!)

I can't really comment on Comcast, since I'm a DirecTV person...but the Flash Pass was certainly awesome!

Watch out Jahan! The Demon is gonna get you!

More sillyness in the Demon Station. (It was pretty much a TPR Takeover at this point!)

Sillyness in the Demon Station

Jahan is soooo excited for an Arrow Ride!!

Heinz = Worth the Wait

Deja Vu and Ryan = Not so much

Everyone really was surprised by Viper...but Louis...what's with that shirt!?!?

More crazy TPR People enjoying Viper ERT.

Viper was running awesome as usual! Why can't all SF Parks have awesome wood like this or El Toro?

You'd think I'd comment on the front row here...but wow, Chris and Jahan are REALLY focused on their crotches!

Yay to Bull's first drop, Boo to Bulls Trims!

Terry! What are you doing??? Michael is NOT a statue!

Raging Bull may not be as amazing as when it opened thanks to the trims, but it's still a really fun ride!

The Brits are all thumbs up about an awesome TRUE ERT session. (No waiting even for front and back rows!)

Wow Giant Drop sure was popular this morning! I'm so glad all the parks worked fast, inspected their rides and got them all back open!

Terry and Allie are all smiles...before!

It's all about Bryan and Luko on the Giant Drop this morning.

Here we are after our long 2 minute drive from the hotel!

(Photo by Jahan)

This is the picture you should have, Elissa.

Getting a little personal?

A few things:

1) Michael became a statue that day! I told his BF that I would make sure he got in a photo but I didn't say how. Wait til he sees that video!

2) All the amusement park food was starting to take it's toll on my frame

3) Viper was great!

4) Superman didn't get away fast enough. You know I got him!

EDIT: I see I got another witness to my seeing how 'super' superman was!

5) You beat me to the punch with a lot of the photos... but I'm still doing my update this weekend

6) How did I get in all these photos that day? They're gonna start saying i'm the 11th person!

7) Iron wolf made me mad. I used to like it back in the day.

8) Did they take a part off of Whizzer? I remember a long time ago I saw a sign near the end that basically said to brace yourself... it was going to brake hard. And it did.

Terry

Q-bot was a lifesaver for sure.

Elissa, you forgot to mention throughout the day there were announcements that Hurricane Harbor was at capacity just to give an idea of how insane SFGAm was. It was still an awesome day though!

^ That's not unusual for SfGam, especially during the summer.

Awesome trip report!

Cool photos!

The Q-Bot at SFAm is the same ones they use at Dollywood. I thought those Q-Bots were more effective than the ones used at other SF parks. You don't have to run around the park and scan your Q-Bot at the Q-Bot scanning thing at each ride. You just scroll up and down to find the ride that you want.

I was very pleased with the hot Q-bot action we got on the trip. It definately helped me in getting my credits (even though the storm beat me to whizzer...).

Oh, and a note about the ERT session we had: TOTALLY KICK A$$!!! I seriously only moved out of my seat to either go from Raging Bull to Viper to Giant Drop, or to go from the front to the back on Raging Bull! It was so awesome!

I love ERT....

The Q-Bots definitely helped out on that day...just not quite perfectly for my group! Our first Q-Bot crapped out twice on us before we convinced them to give us a new one. This made us miss out on a couple credits (oh noes! Another Mouse and mediocore woodie!) but while the thing was working it was a life saver! I loved walking past that lonnnng line for Superman and getting right up to the station! So many dirty looks were cast our way!

I really wish that Cedar Fair would get with the game and put the Q-Bots into their parks. Who knows, then you might actually be able to handle the lines at Canada's Wonderland!

Ha ha ha! Awsome TR! And yes, the Q bos are indeed the bees knees. That is, if bee's knees were in any way, shape, or form, cool, as opposed to disgusting. And all the poor GP had to wait in line for 3 hours just to get to Superman's STATION! We just reserved it on our Q bot and by the time we got to the ride it was time to go on it!

SFGAm was a really awsome day. I was shocked though that Viper ended up being the best ride in the park includin Raging Bull.

I'd say Whizzer was the best coaster at the park. If not one of the better steel coasters on the entire trip!

A few things:

 

8) Did they take a part off of Whizzer? I remember a long time ago I saw a sign near the end that basically said to brace yourself... it was going to brake hard. And it did.

 

Terry

The ride used to run like 5 trains at once.

I'll quote the wikipedia article. Apparently Marriots didn't seem to care about trains crashing into each other.

"From the start, both Willard’s Whizzer roller coasters suffered from problems with the braking system that would sometimes allow trains to collide in the station. Unfortunately, no immediate solution was put forth to remedy this problem. From 1976 to 1979 there were at least eleven instances of the Santa Clara Whizzer colliding in the station resulting in an unknown number of injuries. There were also two instances of the Gurnee Whizzer colliding - both of which occurred less than a month apart in 1976. A total of thirty one riders were injured in the Gurnee Collisions. Then on March 29, 1980, a 14-year-old boy was killed and eight others injured when two trains collided on the Santa Clara Whizzer [1]. Following the accident, both rides underwent several changes. Seatbelts were added, the braking system was modified and the number of trains that could be run at once was reduced from five to three. Willard’s name was also dropped, leaving the ride’s name as simply “Whizzer.” Marriott never reported the potential safety hazard to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which led to a 1981 civil penalty amounting to $70,000 [2]."

ouch!

That looks like one painful ride with the train begin that empty! Bull train even half empty is bad enough.

But it looks like you guys had fun. Too bad you only stayed until 3 or so...I really wish I would have gone but I didn't want to fork up $50 for a flash pass