Leaderboard

Heres some of many other pics I took from over the years. These are all from 2006-2009

Strawberry bread pudding, eh?

Out of curiosity I ran the numbers on what an addressable RGB LED system could cost for Eagle a couple weeks back. Which would be overkill for chasing alone (much more complex effects could be run, and you could do seasonal colors). For 12V RGB LEDs a DIY system is less than $6000 in parts. Including all of the 11.5ft strands needed, the ESP32 boards needed to drive them all and 4000ft of ethernet wire. Enclosures for everything and weatherproofing can likely be done with the tools the park already has on hand. There are alternatives to the ethernet runs since this kind of distance would need switches to deal with the ~300ft length limit of ethernet and I didn't price switches into my estimate (WiFi-only boards are actually cheaper, but then you need enough access points to cover the layout and ethernet would likely be more stable). From what I can tell this is actually price-competitive with the cost of simple white chaser hardware. Commercial basic light strands cost more than you'd think, chasers would be even more. You can imagine the scale of this project though. At least 330 strands of LEDs - with one ESP32 board needed per 20 strands and power taps every other strand. At least 182 connections to weatherize, along with the 17 boards.

We'll see if this actually happens, but good for Six Flags for at least putting a date out there!

Conley - double check the weather. Going to be NICE this weekend.

Kings Dominion had the exact same capacity restrictions as BGW did, 1000 people. Google news search for articles about KD from last summer and they all mention this. They were both able to open at the same time last August - Busch made it work, KD sat on their hands and continues to do so. I'm 110% with Bill on this one. He likes to twist the knife a bit in the name of humor, but its totally warranted in this case. I can't help but wonder wtf CF has been thinking.

I can imagine the percentage of people in China that will ride this version who know about the Taron original is less than .01!!!

I’m really not, I love the company but this last year-or-so... lol But they technically eventually opened their parks in the states where they could and then closed them super early for the season for no discernible reason, yeah. Lol

“Let’s open two months late for no reason and then give everyone free money as an apology for how stupid that is.” Hey from a guest’s perspective... yay! Did I mention that Six Flags managed to charge a huge percentage of their member base every singe month they were closed and every single month since because they gave them all an extra line skip benefit for a few years that cost them $0? Lol god, I’m sorry. I really do like this company. I’m trying to stop endlessly dogging on them but like... they make it so easy.

They'll cut costs by closing half the rides due to wind.

Those were the days. Think of all of the new coaster construction pictures we could have posted on the site since then.

I feel bad because this is all I post about lately but no... if a park has the ability to open and there's demand and they choose to stay closed then they're dumb. Period. Be creative and figure it out. Busch Gardens Williamsburg, SeaWorld San Antonio and Sesame Place are aggressively pushing out their calendars. Six Flags is doing everything they can to open in some capacity absolutely everywhere and always opens right away as soon as they get the green light from the state. Cedar Fair is the only company that thinks the best way to run a theme park company in 2020 and 2021 is to crawl up in the fetal position and do their best to never actually open their business (Okay, I guess Parques Reunidos is doing the same thing but they're the worst company ever so that's to be expected). Cedar Point is always understaffed. They need to figure it out. Nobody is saying that they need to be running both car rides on opening day but I'm sick of acting like this park is competent when year-after-year they have no staff but on a day where they have to close B&Ms for staffing they run a crew of about 20 people on Top Thrill Dragster when Six Flags runs Kingda Ka with a quarter of that ("but it would need to be reprogrammed"... okay, so since this happens every year then maybe it's time to do that) . Figure out how to get more staff or get better at running your park with less staff. Nitro was running last weekend with 3 operators with one of them grouping, running Flash Pass and checking 18 seats and they weren't stacking. Is that ideal? No. Is it better than saying "Well, it's almost Memorial Day and we're right on Lake Erie but it just makes sense from a business perspective to not even make an effort and have to credit our passholders for a few months in 2022 and end up giving them 2 1/2 years for the price of one even though Six Flags managed to bill the majority of people every single month that they were closed because they promised to give away an extra skip-the-line-pass each visit once they reopened... a benefit that cost them essentially nothing. I'm sorry all I've been doing lately is bashing Cedar Fair but they deserve it.

Just like at Over Texas, I think that Great America may have leaked its plans for 2021!

Easy explanation, because corporate Six Flags just doesn't care about anything anymore unfortunately