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The final track piece has been put into place on Monster! Congrats to the Grona Lund team! Can’t wait to ride!

It will be cool when Pantheon finally opens, because all of the trees will have grown up around it.

Posted for the world to see: I’m already getting a buzz for free in my head

Another update is here! Trains are coming along, and track is on site! The track looks pretty good, I think the color is fine. I just hope that it doesn't get to dirty or faded after a couple seasons in the north idaho "snow and sun" weather cycle. The trains are more interesting, I think. I'm not familiar with Wonder Woman or Railblazer's trains unfortunately, but they seem to look pretty neat. I'm hoping that the fact that they don't already have vests on them, mean the vests aren't coming (Imagine...a raptor with no vests!). I might be overly optimistic though, so we will probably have to wait and see. Does any one who know if these look like a next generation of train? Or do they look like just longer copies of the ones on Railblazer/Wonder Woman? The only other bits I have is that (thanks to my new friend...Google Maps) I compared the dimensions of the stations for Railblazer and Wonder Woman, with the dimensions in the plans for Stunt Pilot's station. I found that the dimensions are very similar to Railblazer's, just slightly longer (I assume to accommodate the 10 car trains). This leads me to believe that Stunt Pilot will NOT have the moving loading station like Wonder Woman, and instead have the traditional one like Railblazer's. Although this is a slight bummer from the perspective of trying to incentivize Silverwood to improve their dispatch times...it does make sense that the park would go that route. I don't have any offical information to confirm this though, just my speculation. The last bit is the thought of an opening date for Stunt Pilot. I'm honestly was expecting mid to late june at the best, and the fourth of july as the most practical. But...the park seems to think otherwise...unlike a certain other park that's getting an RMC *cough cough* Busch Garden Tampa *cough cough* (Ok, just had to get that out of the system...). They haven't officially announced anything, but they did respond to a facebook question about it saying "We are shooting for opening it before June". A local news article says its supposed to open in early may, potentially on opening day, but I'm not buying that... I think their optimism suggests that it will open by mid to late june at the latest, assuming it isn't delayed. (Which seriously, how can you have a delay for a ride that is being made 15 minutes from the construction site, right?) Anyways...that's all for now folks! We can now officially start counting down to opening day for the park on May 1!

Are we allowed to go to Sweden yet!!?? I'm ready!!!

And (at the moment anyway) we are planning on getting on a plane. During a pandemic. To travel 1000 miles. To ride coasters in the freezing ass cold. I think there is probably something wrong with us. I am vowing not to think about it or check the weather for at least 24 hours because it is driving me crazy and maybe there will be a positive change by then.

S&S Freespin it is!

They've also posted a full overview of the current (?) progress of the land, including the other coaster (Vekoma family boomerang like the one Farup just opened) and the flat rides: I have no idea what you're talking about, Daniel and I were basically dry in the back!

Oh you know... just scrolling through the operating calendar

Really looking forward to when a POV is available. This ride is just so... unique for being a tried and true coaster style. Hoping some American parks can learn a lesson here. You're never really "out of space" if you're creative and willing to pay for it.

Looking at the plot of land, I almost like the idea of a dark ride there. It is so close to the maintenance area that I wouldn't want to have a tall ride that would put that area in full view for the guests. Though I have always wanted to see a vertical swing attraction at Silver Dollar City. I feel like it will probably be just an expansion of the maintenance area. However, if it was a ride, I'd like to see it be a dark ride/indoor coaster or maybe some kind of thrill ride. Like I would love to see some sort of frisbee ride at the park.

Honestly, I wouldn't be mad if one of the new coasters was a 4D Freespin. I actually find them really enjoyable and fun! Plus, I mean when Marineland DOES add something new, they usually don't skimp out on that investment; it would probably have all the magnetic fins like Arashi. Plus they would probably dress up the ride pretty nice just like they did with Polar Splash and one of their most recent flat rides, Ocean Odyssey. But honestly, anything to start filling out the park would make me happy!

Remember the lady who married 1001 Nachts? Well now there's Lady falls in love with a ride....The Movie!

I believe the area in question is behind and left of Fireman's landing. It's wedged between Fireman's landing, lake Silver, the train's roundhouse, and the park's Maintenance and Construction buildings. I haven't seen the clearing personally, but I attached a rough sketch of what I believe the clearing might look like. It appears that this isn't part of the Pumpkin Nights expansion as the park shows the event now extends into Mystic River Fall's plaza area. Assuming that this clearing isn't simply an expansion of the park's M&C area (which I feel is the most likely situation at the moment), seeing that it's decently compact clearing, I don't see this being any huge new addition like a coaster. If it does end up being a new attraction, I wouldn't be surprised if it's some tower ride like Dropline at Dollywood. Though, it would be kinda odd to have a high thrill ride like that placed in a children's / family area. Maybe this could end up being the rumored new dark ride intended to take the place of Flooded Mine and Fire in The Hole? It's way too early to know at this point, just thinking out loud... Only time will tell.

It's an expansion for Pumpkin Nights. They've got a concept art map here: https://www.silverdollarcity.com/theme-park/Festivals/Harvest-Festival

The setting enhances this ride--much nicer to glide through the trees than just over a concrete slab.

^ I suspect this may be a bit closer to the truth than we realize.

I'm really impressed with how Busch has handled the pandemic and Virginia restrictions. I hope that they can bring more staff back and improve operations to make it slightly less frustrating.

Two more inversion are completed and the construction is soon finished.

Did 6 Flags open Orion? No. They just kept Jersey Devil closed. So there.

I don’t think you get what I’m saying at all. As a fan, I’m really glad they opened Carowinds for like a month even though this event was really stupid because I got to ride two coasters and I was down the road anyway. I don’t care that they closed before what’s normally their most profitable week of Christmas because that’s not my problem. I’m thrilled that Kings Island opened a giga coaster in a pandemic year where they opened in July and had to cap attendance so it couldn’t really move the needle or do anything it was supposed to do but all of those things are objectively stupid. I said “If I were the shareholders”. They’re not going to go on a conference call and go “Yeah sure we suck at running a business but have you been on Orion? So much airtime!”

After some back and forth we decided to visit one last time for the year for Christmas in the park, and glad we did! We went on Sat 11/14 and had a wonderful time overall. Crowds were pretty low despite reservations theoretically filling up; I say theoretically because they weren't even checking reservations on park entry. I suspect the weather kept a bunch of people away, it was a little rainy in the AM, cleared up during the day, but we finished the night literally fleeing the park due to a tornado warning. Riding the parking tram while sirens were going off and my umbrella being destroyed by wind was an experience I won't soon forget. As said it wasn't terribly busy and I noticed a marked improvement in mask wearing, but line distancing was still the hit-or-miss-mostly-miss it's been the whole year. Not much waiting; Fire in the Hole had a bit of a line early on due to it being the only thing running during the rain. Rides were working much better than our previous visit with hardly any down time anywhere. They did seem to be having some electrical trouble though, some trees were out and most notably the big centerpiece tree had lots of dark sections on it (see pic below). Some of the holiday booths never opened either which was a bit of a downer, but wassail was open so I was happy.

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.