Leaderboard

For my trip reports (since I tend to type a lot), I almost always created them in Word, and then copied over. The only time I ever used the "save draft" was because it took so long to upload pics on the old version - 20 at a time. So would save in between to make sure "internet Gremlins" didn't eat my post. As you said, with the excellent new Drag/Drop option? that's no longer going to be an issue. So yeah, big thumbs up on the improvement.

I actually thought the food at the brewhouse was legitimately really good.

Best part of Busch Gardens Tampa's Howl-O-Scream? Getting to ride all the coasters at night!!!

With Japan largely handling its COVID scenario better than some other countries, I was able to finally check Nagashima Spaland off my to-do list after having been on for quite some time. With my trip landing in the middle of what would ordinarily be one of Japan's busiest travel seasons, I was expecting some fairly decent crowds, but I was surprised to see just how much COVID was doing to the parks. With the crowds being extremely manageable, I was also curious to see how the park was handling operations in light of everything. Outside the sanitation procedures, rides with smaller trains had distancing enforced through cut capacity (Hakugei being the worst affected). Thankfully, most of the other major rides had enough distancing built in to operate almost normally (Steel Dragon, Arashi, Acrobat), which offset some of the capacity issues. Overall enjoyed the park and thought it had a solid lineup (especially with Hakugei on it now). Onto the photos: The gateway to happiness. Fairly average queues for the day (though the half capacity one train ops made for longer waits). Longest actual wait time was about 30 minutes. Masks are mandatory for Hakugei and Steel Dragon per newly posted policy. And yes, they survive both just fine. Easily the most photogenic of the RMCs. Probably best to let the photos do most of the talking. There's just no angle that doesn't look good. Fantastic ride with a ton of airtime and awesome elements (this "actually zero G" zero G roll being my favorite), and my new #4. A+ With the last time on a first gen being almost 15 years ago, it was nice to get to ride one again (and the kerchunk wasn't even bad). A Heading to Arashi. With the only similar ride in my count being Green Lantern and knowing how annoyed people have gotten with the 4D Free Spins popping up everywhere, I really didn't expect much out of it. Thankfully, it went against my expectations in all the right ways and ended up being my second favorite behind Hakugei. I don't know why S&S decided to make this particular one able to get every ride spinning almost nonstop, but they need to keep doing it. A+ Steel Dragon 2000 (Nisen), the other big and bold headliner. Pretty solid, long (obviously), with some good speed and nice floater moments. Basically a super giant old school hyper. A- I was also excited to try out an Ultra Twister for the first time. Rough around the edges (Togo, what else?), but still a quirky and enjoyable ride. Sadly, I had also been planning to go to Rusutsu to try the dive loop variant, but my trip plans fell through. But for this one, B. Heading to Acrobat, the Manta clone. "It looks like Manta, but due to international copyright law, it's not." I Can't Believe It's Not Manta!™ Ran fairly rattly, but it's the Manta layout, so it's still good stuff. B+ And some classic Schwarzkopf goodness to round things out. A- Can't go wrong with the Shuttle Loop. A- Not sure if this actually does anything to help pandemic stuff, but still nice to walk out to.

Robb, I just downloaded photos from my Google Photos to my desktop of my laptop and uploaded from there (that's been my practice normally as my phone doesn't have much storage so I don' keep them on there). When I open the photos from my desktop, they all appear to be the correct orientation, but then they upload and some are not.

^^ I had the same issue when I was doing the Dreamworks Water Park trip report. The photos were captured with an iPhone 8 Plus, and I'm using a MacBook Pro to type and upload. I ended up just manually editing and re-exporting all the photos on my side (and dropped them down to a 2000 pixel width as well). I've seen this issue crop up from time to time elsewhere, and this website seems to indicate that it's because: a) the original photo was taken with the iPhone being held "upside down" in landscape mode (ie, the volume buttons on the top, the power button on the bottom) b) some things ignore the EXIF data stored inside the JPGs that is supposed to indicate the proper rotation of the photo. Honestly I don't know if there's much that can be done to account for this on your end, Robb, it might just be something those of us uploading photos will have to individually adjust if it pops up again.

Well it’s *definitely* the best waterpark in Orlando for the next few months. Lol

I withdraw my question.

So no.... not really. The editor will save your text if you browse away and then come back, like if you accidentally hit the "back" button or something. But to do a proper "draft" you should probably edit in another program and then copy/paste into here. The fact that it is much less tedious to insert and move around photos in this editor probably makes the post draft feature a little more redundant with this software. I think it would be pretty easy to paste in text that is formatted for where you want to insert the photos, and then just drag them in.

I really love this new forum!!! The best part is discovering all the cool new features.

Jackbox Party Pack 7 was released today! Excited to give these new games a shot tonight, I've been following the 5 new games pretty closely the past few weeks to get a feel for them and what to expect and they look like a lot of fun.

Friendly reminder to passholders to make sure you stop at guest services before the end of the year (On the left near the entrance)... as they’re giving out $50 in in-park credits and free drink vouchers which can be used on select beer due to covid. I didn’t even know this was a thing but Brit did and I got a lot of beer This even works with those old busted paper passes (and ours are from Williamsburg).

A couple of days ago, the Efteling presented a live broadcast of the new Aquanura show. Personally this was exactly what I needed in this challenging year. Enjoy: This is a temporary version of the show, inaugurated to celebrate the 25-year career of Dutch artist Guus Meeuwis.

Andy Martin of Merlin has shared an update on the trackless vehicles for the Legoland New York exclusive Factory Tour dark ride. https://twitter.com/Jolber/status/1316060003388751874

Great report! I've shared this on our other social media platforms as well!

I ended up visiting the Dreamworks Water Park for the second time this past Thursday. Wait, what, second time?! Believe it or not, I was one of the few people that managed to sneak a visit in during their brief soft opening preview weekend back in March. The whole family and I really loved it, although a few of their slides were non-operational at the time, and we were eagerly looking forward to returning when it was able to reopen. Please note that all of the photos in this trip report were taken during our first visit, back before social distancing measures were implemented. Their new process for operation during the COVID-19 pandemic is similar to what you've seen at other places. They are severely limiting capacity; they are letting a total of 750 people into the park at any given time, which is actually more restrictive than the state's currently allowed 25% of max capacity (and the water park's capacity is in the over 5,000 range). You need to purchase your tickets online in advance. When you arrive at the mall, they will not let you down the entrance ramp unless you show an attendant your barcode in advance. Once you do that, you proceed downstairs where they have a contactless temperature check station set up, with the cutoff at 100.4. Then you go over to the desks where they would typically be selling tickets, they scan your barcodes, and issue you your wristbands with an RFID tag. These tags are used both to get you into the park, and also for use with any lockers you may choose to rent throughout the day. There's a big family locker room, with lots of individual changing booths, but with separate entrances and exits for men and women that lead into the showers and bathrooms. The lockers in here are large (holding two full bags and four pairs of shoes) and rentable for $20 per day. It's a very modern, sleek changing room, kept impeccably clean. For the time being, they are asking that everyone wear their masks in the common areas such as this where you might be in closer contact with others. Obviously, once you're in the park and splashing around, they do not require you to wear masks, with one exception that I'll get to later in the report. Once you get changed and exit the locker room, you're greeted by a big statue of Shrek floating on an inner tube, with a water fountain gushing underneath him. This section is where you'll find the exits for their 1-2 person tube slides, their body slides that end in deep pools, and their surfing simulator. The surfing simulator is currently free for guests but they have stated that they will be making it an upcharge in the future. This is slightly different than the Flowrider models that you can find at most other indoor water parks. It's not nearly as high, with the wave being only about a foot or two high, and they require that you wear a helmet while riding it. For that reason, we all passed on it. Entrances to the different slides are broken up into different collections of stairwells. Directly to the left of the surfing simulator is "Stair A", which leads to two short body slides that drop into a 10' pool, similar to the Shotgun Falls slides at Morey's Piers' Raging Waters. Unlike Shotgun Falls, these have a 48" height requirement and you're not allowed to wear any life vests, so our youngest kid couldn't go on these. Climbing up to the second platform on Stair A takes you to their bowl body slide, Mad Flush, which spins you around before dunking you into a 6.5' deep pool. All three of these were pretty fun! Especially when you're flying five feet in the air before splashing down. Immediately to the right of Mad Flush are the exits for their 1-2 person tube slides. These tube slides were located at Stair C. The only place to get the tubes for these was... right here, by the exit. You'd then have to circle around back past A, walk past B, hang a left at the wave pool, then climb up the steps to get to the entrances for these three slides. It was a bit of a hike but honestly there probably wasn't a better way to do it. All three of these slides allowed riders 42"-48" to ride with an adult, or 48" and above to ride solo, but the double tubes were the only tubes available. The yellow and green slides were your standard enclosed tube slides, with a decent amount of speed and twisty turns. The red one finished in a spiral bowl, and my wife was NOT expecting this. After a few choice words for me she ended up laughing about it, though. Now back to Stair B. When we first visited back in March, these were not open yet, but on our visit last week, they had opened to visitors. All four of the slides located at this stairwell are extreme capsule drop slides, for riders 48" and taller, spread out across two levels. The first level contains Carnivortex and Surfari Slider. The green-yellow Carnivortex is probably the most standard of these, with a short drop into a 360 degree tube. The purple Surfari Slider was more interesting, as you had one initial drop out of the capsule, you leveled out most of the way, and then there was a second drop down to the bottom. I wasn't expecting it and it caught me off guard when that second drop hit. And then the orange and pink slides on the second level, Thrillagascar and Jungle Jammer, were identical open-air drop slides at a whopping height of 142 feet, currently the world's tallest. You drop through the capsule, slide through an empty airplane cockpit hanging from the ceiling, and zoom all the way down into an extra long runout. I did both of these and while fun, they also weren't the most comfortable. I'll probably skip them if I return in the future, but I'd definitely do Surfari Slider again! Stair D holds two lengthy body slides, the Zany Zigzag and Zanier Zigzag. Both of these end in a 3.5' deep pool at the end and are for riders 48" and taller. While they were fun enough due to the length and twists, there were a couple of spots where the speed slowed down to a near crawl. You can also see one of the hot tubs in this picture. There's a few over in this area, and a couple over near the entrance to the lazy river on the other side of the wave pool. During our March visit, these were open, but currently they all are closed off due to physical distancing. Stair E is home to their mat racing slides, Dragon Racers. Well, at least, the entrance to it, anyway. Similar to what they do with their tube slides, you need to get a mat from another location. The mats are located at the bottom of Dragon Racers. However, to get there, you need to climb Stair F. In other words, you need to go up Stair F, grab a mat, go back down Stair F, walk along the edge of the drop slide run off, get back to Stair E, and climb up another three flights of steps. It's a weird layout decision that really isn't that friendly to guests, and as such, I never saw that many people taking advantage of it. Which is a shame, because it's pretty fun for a mat racer. This is one that has a timer so you can brag about coming in first place with your family and friends. Speaking of Stair F, that's the home to their water coaster, Toothless' Trickling Torpedo. Pretty silly name, but it's honestly one of the best water coasters I've yet had the pleasure to ride. I believe they're advertising it as either the longest water coaster in America or possibly the longest indoor water coaster -- not sure, but either way, it's great. Even with the length, once you get up the lift hill, the speed carries you through the layout very rapidly. It's super smooth, the hydromagnetic uphill portions make it an absolute blast to ride without worrying about getting absolutely drenched by the water cannons. There's also a couple of really good airtime hills towards the end that might catch you off guard so make sure you're holding on tight! It's complemented by some statues of the How To Train Your Dragon characters throughout the ride. While there was a wait for it during the middle of the day, during the last hour of operation, it was a walk on and they let us stay in the raft for re-rides once we got back to the loading platform. I would have gone as many times as they let us, to be honest! It's that fun. Let's talk for a minute about the centerpiece of this water park, their absolutely MASSIVE wave pool. This thing is jaw-droppingly huge. This is a wave pool made for social distancing. This takes up a good chunk of the real estate in here, and it dominates your view no matter where you are in the park. Currently, they have most of it roped off along the edge to keep people from just running in from wherever. There's a single roped one-way lane for those looking to enter the pool, and although they weren't limiting capacity while we were there, it seems as if that's the point of doing so. Most of the pool is either at wading depth or for young children, but it does go down to a depth of 8' at the furthest point. During the day, the waves are pretty large but manageable. On our initial visit back in March, after they closed it down to the general public, they brought in some pro surfers and cranked the waves up to the maximum. It was fun watching them drop in from the edges and ride those waves like only they can! On the opposite side of the wave pool, far from the entrance, they have their lazy river, two separate kids' areas, and their three large 4-person raft slides. The lazy river is not that lazy; at spots it was almost as fast as, say, Hubba Hubba Highway at Water Country USA or Roa's Rapids at Aquatica Orlando. There are some smaller blue tubes that have a flat seat for younger children, and there isn't much of a difference in size between the larger blue and pink tubes. Unfortunately as far as tubes go they are still on the small size, and I flopped right off trying to get on one. I ended up just hanging on and floating around the river, but it would be more enjoyable if they were a little bit larger and easier to kick back and relax on. There's quite a few water features throughout where you will get sprayed, drenched, or otherwise soaked, but overall it's still pretty relaxing. The first of their two kids areas is themed after the Penguins of Madagascar. This area has six separate kiddie slides of varying sizes, and they're only for children underneath 48". This was my youngest kid's favorite spot to get repeat slides throughout the length of the day, as they were made for kids just her size. The theming, with the fake iceberg and a penguin in an ice block being carried off by helicopter, was absolutely charming. The other kids area was the Kung Fu Panda Temple of Awesomeness, and for the kids, it definitely lived up to that title. It's another one of those large play structures with a ton of platforms, spouts, buckets, water guns, bouncy bridges, and the like, all capped off with three smaller slides for kids only and three larger body slides for kids and their parents alike. Those larger slides were definitely on the mild side; my wife mentioned that she ended up getting stuck at one point and had to push herself along. But the kids loved them, and in the end, that's the target audience there. This is all in a 6" deep wading pool so even the smallest kids can splash around if their hearts so desire. Just beware of the splash bucket! All the way back in the furthest corner, over a bridge across the lazy river, are the entrances to the two final stairwells, containing three 4-person raft slides. All three of these have a 48" height requirement. First up is Shrek's Sinkhole Slammer, which is their stunning and massive Tornado funnel. It gives a great sense of weightlessness as you drop in and make that seemingly never-ending ascent up the other side. Tornados are usually a big favorite of the kiddo's and mine, and this one definitely doesn't disappoint. Up this same stairwell was the Swamp & Splash, which had multiple smaller funnels to float in, with some sharp dips out of those funnels giving you a good amount of speed in the enclosed parts. The first funnel gave the biggest air out of all of them! The final raft slide in this area was Dragon & Dronkey's Flight. To reach this one, you had to go up the alternate set of stairs, and this was the only one on that set. However, the attendants were letting you choose it if you took the wrong set of stairs by accident. This one was the most mild of the three, with no major airtime features. There was a pseudo-bowl area with a Shrek statue watching over you, but even this didn't really give any significant forces. It all ends in when you splash down through the dragon's mouth. To be honest, this seems like it would have been a good candidate for an all-ages and all-heights family raft. The only reason I think it has the 48" height requirement is because they're using the same cloverleaf style of 4-person rafts here as they do on the other two slides, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this change at some point in the future. A few other items to note: On this visit, the amount of tables and chairs throughout the complex had been significantly reduced and heavily spaced out to provide for better social distancing. If you didn't feel comfortable leaving your stuff on a lounger, you could also rent a smaller locker in the park itself at $12 for the day. These were large enough for a couple of towels, water shoes, and a single small bag. The food options were mostly pre-packaged cold items, such as sandwiches, wraps, and salads. The only hot items were hot dogs and soft pretzels. For the four of us, we spent about $55 on lunch for the day. The service counter was also the only spot inside the park itself where wearing a mask was mandatory; still, the employees were separated by a thick plexiglass barrier. During our initial visit, there were several costumed characters walking around willing to pose for photo ops with the kids. Princess Poppy from Trolls got lots of hugs, and the kiddo got into a flossing dance-off with King Julien from Madagascar. This past time around, there were no up close meet-and-greets like that, but King Julien continued to make appearances near the wave pool, dancing on top of the (currently closed) swim-up bar and DJ booth. Most of the major slide stairwells were separated in two; one side had a "Turbo Pass" sign on it. They weren't selling these either time we visited. I assume that once the pandemic restrictions are lifted and they're able to fill this place to capacity, the lines will get much longer and it might be a case where if you want to do as much as you can in a day, you'll have to buy a skip-the-line pass. For that reason, I'm definitely recommending checking it out now while the capacity is limited. There's been a lot of complaints about the pricing structure here. There's no question about it; it's not cheap. They're currently charging $89 for adults, and $79 for kids. Is it worth the price, though? In my opinion, right now, I would say yes. There's a huge amount of stuff to do, the big attractions that they have are especially rerideable, and there's plenty of space to keep your distance from others. With the current limitation of no more than 750 people in the park, now is pretty much a perfect time to visit if you want to just slide and enjoy yourself. I don't think it's going to be a case where the price will eventually go down, simply due to its proximity to the NYC area. There might be some Groupon discounts eventually but I think the retail price will only go up from here on out. One last thing to note; while this is located in a mall, the mall itself is located in Bergen County, which has a blue law that states there is to be no retail shopping on Sundays. I don't get it either. This wasn't a problem on Thursday, obviously, but on our first visit back in March, we did end up going on Sunday... and ran into a problem when we realized we forgot our daughter's swimsuit. At the time, no retail stores in the mall were open, but even if they were, we wouldn't have been able to purchase anything for her. What we ended up doing was leaving temporarily, and driving about ten minutes away to a nearby Walmart that was in a different county just to get her something she could wear. Embarrassing for sure. Hopefully at some point this law will change... or hopefully other visitors won't be nearly as scatterbrained as we were. Overall, this has quickly become our favorite indoor water park, one that we look forward to visiting many times again in the future. If they end up offering a season pass at some point, I think we'll definitely pick up passes. If you're a fan of water slides, I highly encourage you to bite the bullet and check this one out, and advise you to do so sooner rather than later!

It's so weird seeing the park map like that, but at least a half open park is better than a closed park!

I went to the park last Friday and everything was a walk on. Picked up the Shredder and Sandy credits since they were both closed on my visit last December. Shredder was awesome and I would highly recommend sitting two on one side facing forward and no one on the other side for the best spins. The car would not stop spinning and seemed to spin faster when it hit the brake run. The layout is really cool and as far as I know the first two sections are unique to this spinner. Some of the other sections are similar to some of the clones. Some of the brakes hit a bit too hard but it is still a blast. Sandy was awesome and is a solid ride. I wasn't blown away but it had some great hangtime and the roll at the end felt slightly disorienting. Back row was whippier but I think the front is the best. The front of the train was making a weird noise too but the ride is relatively smooth. It was noticeably louder at the valley of the part above the station too. I did see two breakdowns including once while we were on it, so ride it early incase it has issues. One was a backwards rollback that I saw before I got on. Ops were not allowing any phones on either, but the free lockers are so easy to use. Also got to do the drop tower which was closed last time. This is easily on of the best rides there. The launch is awesome and the spinning view at the top is super cool. Only disappointment is the drop which is very forceless. Swings were good too but the seats were uncomfortable. Shell Raiser seemed smoother than last time but maybe it is just the train we got. I remember the second half being rough including a pothole at the bottom of the drop, but didn't notice much this time. The back row is 100% the place to sit though, much smoother than the front. The front has a weird shakiness that the back doesn't have. This place is great though and I would highly recommend it. I likely will not be back until ticket prices come down and the pandemic goes away. There were very few people there though and feel like the higher ticket prices limits the crowds a bit. I would like to check out the water park too at some point which looks insanely cool, but that price needs to come down big time.

^ as I posted on FB. . . . "In the alternate universe, where Valerie Bertinelli never gave up snorting coke"

Good old fashioned horror, at it's best. You can almost see the fangs.