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Honestly, some of my favorite experiences at parks involve meeting new people. Last year at Kennywood, a very nice family of 5 saw me hanging around near Thunderbolt and were happy to let me ride with them. Fast forward to a few weeks later - I'm at Cedar Point making my way around collecting the access passes, when out of nowhere I hear, "hey is that the Kennywood guy?!?!" Yup, same family

Forget throwing a guitar off the ride, judging by the musical style, it seems he got to ride Voyage in 2003!

I'll be there this Tuesday and can provide an update as well.

Happy 50th anniversary to Magic Mountain! Hard to believe it's "only" been 50 years. Seems like this park has been around forever...

I went to Kennywood a few years ago by myself and did not know the rule about single riders on Thunderbolt. Fortunately, there was another single rider in line so I didn't have to wait too long.

Official Velocicoaster POV released!

So, with Cedar Point seemingly down for the count this morning (they did end up opening up some, but not all of the major coasters), I decided to drive out to Waldameer earlier than I had planned for my first visit to the park. All in all, a great time. It has a quaint charm to it, not unlike Knoebels. They've even got a Larson drop tower, which is probably just as nutty as Stratosphere, but it wasn't running today, so I can't be sure. My first ride of the day was Wacky Shack, a classic mutli-level dark ride. Good enough, but some of the effects inside were obviously not working. It has this little downhill section...does that make it a credit? LOL, no. First coaster of the day was Ravine Flyer II. Nerd shot. So what did I think? HO. LY. SHIT. This was an incredible ride, both in the front and the back, but I'll put the front a little bit higher. As someone else said, you could easily mistake this for a GCI....I got a lot of Mystic Timbers and White Lightning vibes off of it. With Millennium Flyers, this would be a top 5 wooden coaster for me....even with the shitty two-bench PTC's it might end up in the top 10. Speed, twistys, airtime...this coaster has it all. This thing, though? Disappointing. I was expecting a classic junior woodie with some pops of air like the Woodstock Express clones in the back row, but nope...it just kinda meanders around the course, never really doing anything special. I expected better with the buzz-bar and no-seat-belt junior PTC trains, but...meh. One and done for me. That was it for me for rides here, two laps on RF2, one on Comet, and one on Wacky Shack. The Music Express and Paratrooper were running stupidly slow, so I skipped them. It is nice that they have a Chance Wipeout, but I recall them making me violently ill, so it was also skipped. I DID very much like that you could use your rides card points for food, which I thought was a smart move. As for the food, I had a burger (very good, especially for the sub-$5 price), and a pretzel, which was a little hard for my liking. They also had this "ACE Memorial Park" which I found hilarious for how little was in it. Note that you could not read whatever was once written on the two plaques. So long, Waldameer. I will definitely be stopping by on my next trip out to Cedar Point for some laps on Ravine Flyer II. Now get to work on those Millennium Flyers!

Happy Birthday to the park! 50 years is a big milestone. I know they're really just trying to reopen, but anyone know if they've put up any signage celebrating the anniversary? Speaking of birthdays, I was originally going to postpone longer, but flights and other pricing worked out that I just set in stone my first trip to the park on my birthday. It's only a couple days after the currently-scheduled date that CA lifts all their restrictions (June 15th), so I went ahead and made my reservation & got a Platinum flash pass since I'm sure it'll be pretty busy. I know the park hasn't officially lifted their in-state only restriction, but with Disney doing so recently and the (hopeful) lifting of all restrictions coming up, I'm a bit doubtful this park will hold out much longer.

I've ridden Goliath probably 20 times all over the train, mostly in the back. Not once have I experienced any airtime that I would consider "ejector." I think the whole ride is quite graceful (and floaty) for an Intamin. But I do think it's a beautiful coaster with super comfy trains.

It's pretty damn busy today. Maybe some of the locals missed the memo that they were supposed to drive somewhere else? Line to Patriot extending way outside queue.

Memorial Day weekend and great weather here in Orlando. Hagrids HAD a 90 minute wait before the virtual times ran out. At the same time, VelociCoaster was 45 minutes! I am betting wait times will average 45-90 during the summer. But like I said earlier, I have been able to ride it multiple times in the evening. They usually post a 60 minute wait, but the line moves so fast, it's usually less than that.

I'm not going today haha, I'll visit sometime this week. I had a few visits last year and went passholder weekend this year. Orion is a ton of fun but if you haven't been on it yet I'd recommend you get more than 1 or 2 rides on it. I like it the more I ride it, it's just a really fast coaster so it's over before you know it! Multiple rides allow you to appreciate it more for sure.

During a week day FL won't sell out so you could just buy it if lines are 30+. I'm hoping we'll only have 15 minute wait times but who knows with this year! There are just sooo many locals and tri-staters with passes coming in full force to see Orion. Today will be interesting to watch as it's only a high of 57* it's like a fall day. Let's see if it still hits capacity!

Park isn't open for daily/weekday operations yet. I'm curious to see how crowded it is as well, I'll probably visit on Tuesday or Wednesday and report back.

as far as I'm aware, the ride is operating.

^At least it only takes cutting down the nearby forest and a simple track replacement to go from topper track to I-Box!

Indeed it has. There now. The place is SLAMMED. Bowling alley, bar, restaurant, everywhere. Ohio is definitely back open for business.

Ah all good then! I was gunna say, if you wait about near Thunderbolt you are likely to find another single rider, and worst case I heard that a ride op would hop on with you, though idk if it would happen given the current situation. Bc yes I was a sad sack that went to Kennywood alone knowing Thunderbolt don't do single riders lol I only had to wait about a minute before I found someone. But ofc much better to go with someone! Esp since you never know who you'll get. That guy was kinda weird and not so cool....I ended up ditching him ha Will agree with Exterminator, the line is gnarly. So much so I missed it last time by not wanting to wait then it went down. Won't make that mistake a week from now. EDIT: going solo again but this time I don't need to do Thunderbolt so I can't find anyone I'm good!

I think Velocicoaster's reliability (due to months and months of testing, I assume), the higher capacity trains, and the month-long soft opening will all alleviate some hype on opening day and make it much less of a clusterf*ck than Hagrid's was. I'm going on the 16th and 17th, and given how smoothly everything seems to be running, I am hoping for at least a couple rides! Can't wait!

That's not quite a haiku but keep trying.

Pretty stoked as I'm going to SFOT tonight for the first time since the TPR trip in 2009. It will be nice to pay my respects and experience the OG RMC! And then get fat on Whataburger (which I missed in 2009).

Friendly reminder that daily ops start Friday! Daily ops at California's Great America start... never. Was this just a cheap excuse to rip on Cedar Fair some more? The world may never know.

so. . 15 days back on plan, and slowly working my way back up to 1:30 walks. (today's was 1:20, and until today, been doing ~1:15 for a week). still struggling with portion control, but no sodas, no fast food, and no eating after 8pm is working for me. so in 15 days of exercise, I'm down ~5.5 lbs. today I weighed in at 203.2 lbs (started at 208.8 back on 5/11). i think I'll hit my goal of 200 or under by end of month (fingers crossed)

Everyone focusing on the record-breaking, and talking about most inversions just reminds me of the original Smiler rumors that the first section of track would be a washing machine style spinning piece of track that could be adjusted to make sure the ride never lost its record of most inversions. I know marketing loves the word record breaking but it can be anything, look at Hagrid's coaster. The fact it's a Harry Potter roller coaster sells itself but they jumped through so many hoops trying to justify the 'biggest free-fall' or ' first story based coaster' so they could stick some records on there. Everyone's going to end up very disappointed when this record breaking coaster is just the washing machine spinner, a 5ft lift hill and drop and then a turn back to the station and the challenging location is the corner of a giant arcade.

For my own sanity, I'd rather La Ronde get Vipere than something I might get the urge to ride...

Has anyone heard of how Michigan's Adventure is doing today? I think today is the first day?

Cedar Point thus far is a bust today too; no rain but 35mph wind gusts that don't look like they're going to die down anytime soon. Ride op outside Raptor said they need to drop below 20mph. Feel bad for those lined up for the major coasters. Keep the hope alive LOL. I'm off to Waldameer now, and will try swinging back to CP later on.