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Bayern Kurve is indeed my favorite flat ride... so naturally was disturbed about Kennywood's actions. It has come full circle since I "lost" my Kurves at Cedar Point, Kings Island, Geauga Lake, Canada's Wonderland, etc when I was young. The happiness I felt the first time I went to Kennywood and saw, even from the road, that this park had one. Back in the old pre-internet days, you didn't know what the park had til you got there. Kennywood was always on the list to visit once I learned they took special care of the historical rides... Kangaroo, Noah's Ark, Old Mill, Paratrooper, Whip ... happy that my kids also got to enjoy these rides as we often visited while traveling from Connecticut back to the families in Ohio each year. Always afraid that Kennywood would go full corporate like Six Flags and Cedar Fair, and surprised it took so long to do so... Sorry... had to rant on my first post of any kind on this website.. and agree, if Kennywood can't do it anymore... sell the rides to Knoebels-- they know and care about preserving the classics!

"Lloyd" is the name of the character this park official played as a cameo in the Hallmark Christmas movie "Christmas at Dollywood" To be safe (cause I am not sure of the rules here) I won't name him but it's easy enough for you to figure out who in park management this is and this was at an official Q & A session at Saturday's Smoky Mt Coasterfest, which I attended. He did confirm that sections of the topper track would be replaced by I-box, stated that the launch should now be much more reliable, and did not discuss the trains at all. I got the impression they firmly believe the track is the issue not the trains. He also said there will be trackwork done on Mystery Mine and indicated that they were looking at replacing the trains so that over the shoulder restraints would not be needed. Which as I am now sitting here with actual bruises on my shoulders from the airtime jamming me up into the shoulder restraints, I am only 5' 1" not sure how much that factors into it, is welcome news.

Oh and a total loud Thank you shout out to the very very kind Dollywood staff who helped get my car key back to me (and the very kind anonymous person who turned it in after I was stupid enough to lose it from a zippered pocket ) so that my son and I were not stranded 500 miles from home waiting for someone in St Louis to fedex the spare key to us.

There have been some great new updates from Disney Parks today! First, check out some brand new footage of the prototype ride vehicles of Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT! And now, here's some further updates on Cosmic Rewind and all of the other projects happening around EPCOT! Remy's Ratatouille Adventure will be opening in 2021! "...plans are on track to open Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure in 2021. Based on Disney and Pixar’s hit film, “Ratatouille,” this family-friendly attraction will invite you to shrink down to the scale of a rat for a culinary adventure with Chef Remy. During each adventure, you’ll race across Gusteau’s kitchen floor aboard special trackless ride vehicles in a thrilling 3D chase." More here: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2020/11/updates-on-new-disney-parks-attractions-entertainment-offer-glimpse-of-exciting-future/?fbclid=IwAR3fuHFXhgPfV_hWL-bzwxKpZZTqbpIIsJdTPLrqCy2N8vvXA1fLLT8aLhU

Does being open count as a characteristic of the ride?

To those who for some reason are complaining about Disney adding some really cool looking brand new coaster..

So, I think i'm going to burst my HWN cherry next year and finally take the trip (before I get too old). I've never did a several day coaster event so I have no idea what to expect. I've also never been to Holiday World so I really don't know what to expect. Any tips, suggestions?

^According to RCDB Rampage cost 4.3mil in 1998 or about $6.9 mil today adjusted for inflation. I'll throw out my arbitrary "fingers crossed for a new gen Vekoma" post here.. One day it'll happen.

Lol, I get that a but I do have this annoying job I have to do in order to earn money and my son has this annoying thing to finish called his last year in high school and oh yeah, we left Dad at home, he might notice we didn't come back at some point.

Newer gen trains without the OSR would really make this ride 100% better. It's quite rough now.

I'm sure that's not the criteria. They'll reopen when the governor arbitrarily decides that they can. There will be no metrics or science involved but there will be a press conference about how they're following the science anyway.

I would love for them to get a Mack Mega coaster like Alpina Blitz at Nigloland, I know it would most likely never happen but something similar in place of Bobsled would be a good size fit for the park. Unfortunately the price would most likely be out of the Six Flags budget especially now. I did hear they may bring back the ride share program which maybe means they bring in a mid level ride from a bigger park to infuse a little excitement for a smaller park like Great Escape. I would be fine with that honestly, at least its something different,

I’ve had a few drinks but this is the scenario as I imagine it. I’m at least 0.001% sure this is what happened but in my head it’s 100% what happened because that’s what I choose to believe. The Ferris wheel is sitting 20 feet from the bobsled. I just picture the park president standing next to the two rides talking to the demo crew like “Okay so we need to cut budget and this thing is obviously a giant expensive piece of shit disaster can you get rid of it?” “Say no more” And then the next day he shows up for work and is like “Where the f*ck is my Ferris wheel and why is this expensive piece of shit still here???” That has to be it. As stupid as that scenario is I feel like it’s less stupid than them having to choose what ride they should remove for budget citing reliability, cost and capacity and not picking that thing. I like the thing but it shouldn’t exist.

I was at the park on that day, too. It was actually my first visit, and I couldn't have picked a better day to experience the desolation that is Six Flags America on a November Sunday. There's no way that they were making any money. In three hours, I got 20 rides on all of the coasters. The second train was already gone for most of the coasters. I think it's funny that they still needed to sanitize and run the train empty after three cycles even if only a combined 10 people had ridden it. Overall, I really enjoyed Wild One and the coasters in Gotham City. Batwing was my first flying coaster, so I probably liked that a little more than I should have. It was weird seeing all of the Christmas decorations up but also seeing lots of Halloween stuff still lying around.

2021 is the resort's 50th, but 2022 is EPCOT's 40th, so they can still tie it in.

The new hotels look great! Love the idea of adding solar panels. Wish more parks would realize the huge benefit to them!

^That's what a lot of us are hoping for at this point, but I could see them pushing to even summer/fall of 2022 with everything now. Remember how they used to celebrate birthdays/anniversaries for like 12 months on either side of the actual date, I feel like they're now going to push that to like 18 months AFTER the big dates!

I swear, that would make the ride 10 times better! I wonder what track work could be done? There is quite a bit of shuffling after the vertical drop.

I don't care if this is wood, steel, PVC, or a combination of anything. As long as it has the same great layout and actually runs reliably, I'm happy!

I seriously don't care what they do as long as the ride works.

At first glance I saw Desperado trains!

I'm just happy to see the fondue back!

We visited this past weekend for the Harvest Festival. We had a good but not great time. Good because the park decorations are beautiful, the weather was great (although a bit hot), and riding at night is just wonderful at SDC. Not great because, similar to my Spring visit, people's behavior is AWFUL. If anything it's gotten much worse than Spring. Next to no mask enforcement, you need one to get in but once inside the park then pretty much nothing. And forget social distancing, almost every ride we went on people were just flat out ignoring the spacing markers and one group actually got belligerent with us when we politely asked for some room. We were planning on a Christmas lights visit as well but are now reconsidering. Just very wearying having to deal with such disrespect towards the park and other guests. The park had a rough weekend for ride operations as well, pretty much every big ride was down at some point and Time Traveler flat out broke Saturday night and didn't reopen on Sunday (at least not before 6 when we left). This as you might imagine led to pretty hefty wait times as once one or more ride went down, everyone would flock to the ones still running. Mystic River Falls got up to 3.5 hours on Sunday! The wait time estimator was pretty much useless because of this, other than being able to determine whether a ride was open at the moment or not. I don't want this to sound TOO negative, we had fun despite all of this. But the confluence of behavior and operations trouble was disappointing. Both Sat and Sun were very foggy in the morning, Wildfire in particular was amazing to ride in that condition. I think everyone takes a picture of this one Subtle reminder that yes, there are pumpkins here The jackolanterns are the stars of the show but I like the simple yet effective way they light the trees themselves.

The US will never come close to a 100% take rate for a COVID vaccine. Hell, for the 2018-2019 flu season, only 45% of adults got the flu shot, which has been tested and proven to have minimal side effects over the past several decades. Tetanus vaccination is only around 63%. Pneumococcal vaccination is around 25%. Any COVID vaccine available will be unproven outside of trials, not to mention the politics surrounding it....I'd be very surprised if the take rate broke 10% the first year. If "everyone vaccinated" is the Governor's criteria, I feel really bad for the economy up there.

^When I worked on the ride, we busted standing riders about once every 2 weeks. The bigger issue with Blue Streak was the unload/load dispatch situation. People would occasionally complain about being rushed into the train... with that old manual operation, you had to send trains out quickly or the ride would set up. If people needed help fastening their seatbelts (which were optional at the time, and we would announce that), it was preferable to shut the ride down with the train at the base of the lift, than to let the ride set up. So, the park changed the station to a modern/computerized system with clamp brakes... a couple years after that, the trains were butchered. A few years ago I asked my former rides manager from CP why the park did that. He gave me a vaque answer something like "at a certain point, all the equipment needs to be the same" (he was referring to the equipment on the wooden coasters at the park and in the chain). Another factor could have been that many of the old lap bars were still original (1964) and needed replacing. Instead of putting in new buzz bars, they went all-out with the then popular PTC overhaul which included ratcheting lap bars, seat dividers, high back headrests and seat belts (ratcheting/self-locking seat belts to boot, which is a Cedar Fair special).

There's a whole segment at the Epcot Preview Center about how some alien dudes are excited to be part of 'world showcase' at epcot with the first 'off planet' world or some crap like that. Sorry, never saw the movies so don't know exactly what's what but it's Disney so they found a way to tie it in in a cute fashion.

I mean they shared a polaroid at D23 a few years ago of a young Peter Quill visiting EPCOT as a child (born in the early 1980s) before he was abducted by Yondu in 1988. So he's been before and I guess now want's to come back for some reason. That's the start of a pretty interesting back story for a theme park attraction IMO but I guess it's not "smart" enough like Horizons was........