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Had a great visit to the park on Friday June 11. It was my first time back since 2016 and my kids' first ever visit to the park. Got to the park at about 8:20am and the parking lot opened at 8:30am, so we got a nice up front spot. They started letting people into the park around 8:50am, so we grabbed our FL+ wristbands and headed to MF, where we got on the 2nd train of the day. My kids absolutely loved the ride and said it was their favorite coaster ever, but that comment would be short lived. We hustled back to Maverick and got two rides in during the early entry. My plan was to hit SV next, but a train was parked on the lift hill and the app said it was down. So we started hitting the other coasters (Corkscrew, Gemini, Magnum, Rougarou), which were all complete walk-ons with FL+. We were getting a little hungry, so we headed to Frontier Village for the food festival. The booths weren't quite open yet, so we did Skyhawk twice (my favorite giant swing) and the CCMR (15 min wait since no FL). By that time is was noon and the food festival booths were open (the hours said 2-8pm, but the booths all opened at noon). We absolutely loved the Frontier Festival and it's a shame they aren't doing it all summer. We had bought two tasting cards ahead of time ($50 with season pass discount) and it fed all five of us, with tickets left over for desserts. There were no lines at any of the booths and all of the food we got was very tasty. I especially liked the brisket and sausage sliders, which were only 1 ticket each and pretty filling. After lunch, we headed to the front of the park to knock out Windseeker, Wicked Twister, Gatekeeper, Raptor, and Valravn. The kids loved Gatekeeper, so we ended up riding that twice. My two daughters wouldn't do TTD despite riding Xcelerator many times before, so my son and I did it twice and it was only about a 15 min wait with FL+. They were running 6 trains on it and the ops were hauling, as they were all day long. It seems like CP has their operations running smoothly now, at least as far as the rides are concerned. By this time it was about 4pm and the kids were hungry again, so we split some strombolis from Hugo's Kitchen and headed to the back of the park for Steel Vengeance. The app said it was a 60 min wait and we waited about 15-20 minutes per ride with FL+. We ended up riding it four times because it was just that good. I had very high expectations going into the ride but it managed to exceed them all! The airtime is just crazy, there's a ton of sideways airtime (who knew that was a thing), the pacing was incredible (no dull moments), and it was butter smooth. I was worried that my kids might find it too intense (they were done with Maverick after two rides) but they all declared it as their new #1 coaster and demanded we ride it over and over. We finished the day off with 2 great rides on MF and some souvenir shopping. My son has decided to start collecting Nanocoasters from the parks we visit, so he got a MF nanocoaster for his first one. Overall it was just a perfect visit and my kids are now fully converted to CP, so we will probably be making annual trips going forward.

So for anyone who is interested I got some details on the turkey leg incident. This was via my personal ride op who got it from a supervisor, so it's been through a few people BUT........apparently, there are only a finite number of turkey legs available each day due to the fact that they have to smoke/roast overnight. So they had told the people in line we only have enough to get through person A but that the other stand still had some and they could go there, which most people did. However, one person started arguing about it since that line was longer and she clearly did not understand what a finite number means That started the argument, that turned into a fight, that turned over the cart, that killed the fly, etc etc. Best part: the "cart" that was turned over were the turkey legs that were getting ready to go into the cooker for the next day so they were fighting over turkey legs that were not even cooked yet. I hope they all got sick.

I know that the world isn’t exactly clamoring for another Jersey Devil coaster review but I figured I’d do a brief post with my thoughts. We went yesterday and got tons and tons of rides all over the train in the morning and at night (the park stayed open an extra hour since they were so busy). Let’s set some expectations: If you’re expecting Wonder Woman, you’re not going to get it here. I actually feel like the best way to look at this ride is that it’s more similar to the pacing of a regular RMC than one of those old batshit single rails but people positively lose their shit over regular RMCs so that’s not a bad thing. First off: The ride area and queue are very nice. My expectations for this park in that department are always low and none of it will change your life but it’s better than I expected so kudos on that front. As for the ride, it was running all four trains and when it got in a groove it’s capacity was better than you would expect. I’m sure it’s capacity is realistically higher than rides with higher theoretical capacities like El Toro and Bizarro on a lot of cycles since the restraints are very forgiving and the boarding never stops. It’s not like El Toro where the train is loaded and then it’s that “recheck 3,5,6... we got 6, lost 6, now just 3 and 5... we lost 2... now just 6... verified” bullshit. As for the ride itself, I guess let’s just go element by element. - The view from the lift is great. It’s a really nice view of the lakes and of Nitro. At Sunset, it was crazy. This is where Six Flags should take all of it’s Nitro social media / website / marketing photos from. - The first drop delivers insane ejector in the back and even solid ejector in the middle. - The first inversion is nuts everywhere and just an awesome element overall. - The next hill is an ejector hill with insane ejector airtime everywhere in the train. This will probably be a lot of people’s favorite part of the ride. - The stall following it is a blast. If the ride is running fast it’s wild, if it’s running slow then it might even enhance this element. - I thought that the turnaround would be a throwaway element but it’s absolutely not. In the back maybe it is, in the front it made me yell out an involuntary expletive. That’s RMC single rail pacing at it’s finest. - The next inversion is the most underrated thing on the ride. Throw your hands up and just enjoy it. It’s a really cool element where it feels like the world is in slow motion. I guess it’s not that forceful compared to everything that came before it but it’s just as much fun. I’ll admit that from this point forward, the ride definitely chills out a bit. The pop into the midcourse is nice but nothing crazy. The best way thing about the second half is the visuals. The headchoppers are great. My favorite element of the second half is the left turn after the midcourse because it just feels like there’s no clearance there and the turn is very tight. Every airtime hill on the second half provides mild floater air. Think “Nitro’s final camelbacks in December” airtime... maybe. The people complaining about this ride are probably judging the entire ride on this 10 second stretch, which is dumb. I firmly believe that the designers expected this part of the ride to run faster and it’s possible that they can tweak it to get it that way, maybe even just by dialing down the timing and having it sail through the midcourse. Even as-is though, it’s still fun. Despite ending the review on a low note with those last few hills, the ride is insane. The pacing on the first half is awesome and if the midcourse would have been the final brake run everyone would be blowing this ride. It has ejector air, it has “oh shit” moments, it has a forgiving restraint and a low height requirement and it looks great. It fills a nice niche for Great Adventure. Everyone is going to love this ride from the regular day-guests to the extreme thrill seekers (unless they’re just jaded as hell). At most parks in the northeast, this would be the best ride in the park. It would probably be my favorite ride at Lake Compounce, Dorney, Six Flags America, maybe Hershey (or at least top 2), Nick U, La Ronde (except it would run one train), possibly Busch Williamsburg... you get the point. I think most complaints about this ride are due to people being spoiled as hell by the fact that it’s not the most intense ride in the park with the strongest ejector airtime in the park but it’s still super intense and has crazy airtime. The problem is that across the park you have the tallest coaster in the entire world that goes 128 mph and one of the best, if not the best Intamin airtime machines ever built. We walked in with lowered expectations after reading the reviews but after riding it I realize that every enthusiast in New Jersey is just comparing everything to El Toro which means they’ll just end up hating everything forever. Go in expecting regular RMC Ibox pacing but with the unique ride experience of a single rail and you will love it. Ranking isn’t my thing, but I’d say that El Toro is clearly the best ride in the park but after that depending on my mood this might be my second favorite. It could also be Kingda Ka or Nitro at any given time. God, we’re spoiled. Ignore the haters, come out and ride this. It’s wonderful. We love Jersey Devil! A few general park updates: - Great job by the park staying open an extra hour because of crowds. They filled the parking lot which I’ve never seen outside of Fright Fest. How busy were they? Well... (we walked by, it was not a typo). - Now that Kingda Ka can run independently of Zumanjaro, the gloves are off. The crew yesterday was the best I’ve ever seen on that ride. They were practically running. Also: There is no longer a station grouper and you are free to wait for row one no matter what. We did, as we always do. Amazing ride... - I’m so used to riding Nitro in the winter that I forget what this thing can do when it warms up. That hill before the swoopy hill into the helix (I named that element just now) was providing borderline ejector air all day long. - We rode the Flume. We asked if we could not be grouped, we were denied. I should have just jumped in the lake to get less wet. Please stop doing this, nobody likes it. - The new temporary dinosaur thing was cool. After 6:00 you can pay 5 bucks and do it as a walkthrough rather than a drive through. It’s better than Dinosaurs alive was. The animatronics are pretty solid. Overall we had an awesome day (thanks to Flash Pass). Come out and ride this thing, you won’t regret it. Just don’t do it on a Saturday unless you’re getting there at opening, but if you do you should rope drop the Flash Pass building, not Jersey Devil. Flash Pass lines stretched back to the Joker entrance yesterday. They really need to improve that system.

On my last trip to the park I hit a milestone!

SUPER QUICK OVERVIEW: Had A GREAT day today!!! You would think it was a completely different park from opening weekend. Got in the park "late" at 1030am, immediately got through security and picked up our FL+ wristbands with no wait. Went on the rides in the following order: Valravn was 10ish min, Magnum was 1 train wait (both FL and regular line, they were actually using 3 trains), one side running on Gemini 5 min FL, Dragster took about 20 min since they opened late and when it first starts running it's much lower capacity since they only load a couple rows. Maverick took about 20 min, steel Vengeance took about 10 min (!!!!), Millennium force about 20 min, raptor was a 1 train wait with FL, Gatekeeper was closed due to chain snap yesterday. All the food stands for frontier festival had no lines and many opened before 2, all the drink places were open so I could actually use my all season drink thing without waiting, pretty much all the food places were open. No complaints honestly it was a great day and a huge change of pace from opening weekend. Got everything we wanted done + multiple food places with our tickets in 5.5 hours! The regular lines were probably a minimum 1 hour for all the bigger rides judging by eye. The FL+ *really* helped. Let me know if you have any questions! I have a 4 hour drive each way so if I can blast through the park it makes my life easy driving, even before the sun goes down. Next time we get a hotel I will go for the multiple rerides but seriously it was a great day (minus the fact it was HOOOTTT) and I'm burned lol edit: oh I forgot to mention the asshole bird that DIVE BOMBED FULL SPEED INTO MY HEAD near Maverick. wtf!? *SQUAWK*

And then there's the bakery in Texas, who lost a big cookie order due to their posting Rainbow Heart cookies on their Facebook page. But, everybody else came to the rescue and sold them out ... twice in two days ... of everything they had ..... great story. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/06/texas-bakery-lost-big-order-photo-pride-cookies-internet-stepped/?utm_source=LGBTQ+Nation+Subscribers&utm_campaign=ff8c1f01c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_06_13_03_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4eab596bd-ff8c1f01c0-430877701

OUT was released last year on the Disney+ channel. But now Disney and Pixar have decided to release it for everybody, celebrating this year's Pride Month. Enjoy it! A first for both Disney and Pixar!

It sounds like they're working on the Steel Vengeance situation over the past couple weeks at least. I think the most optimal way to do it is to put about 50 people in the tunnel, let them go through the lockers. Then if you have both detectors running, FL+ goes left and standby goes right. If not, then keep everyone together and just have one set of stairs open. Keeping the line blended with standby and FL on both sets of stairs, and then letting 18 people in at a time from one side and 6 from the other side EVERY ride was total BS. It sounds like they were doing it right at first, so don't know why they went down the road they did the weekend I was there. Glad they learned from it.

Honestly they might pull it off but I just don't understand why they would do it this way after screwing it up over and over and over again. Obviously it's a different country with different programs and situations and it's a very densely populated area but why wouldn't they just list early closings and then extend them later once they know that they have the staff? Listing a 7PM closing won't stop anyone from going. If they extend it later they look good and if they don't extend it nobody will care. I feel like they're putting themselves in a position to potentially piss everyone off (again) for no reason.

I've got a couple of loonies and toonies lying around, so I'm game! I'll go with July 28th. Want to give them a few days of the 10 pm close before they realize they don't have enough people and then make the announcement. Obviously there's a much bigger pool of people to pull from in the GTA, so maybe they won't have any issues. But this is CF we're talking about, and Bill has been pretty much spot on in all his assessments thus far this year!

Wow! Starting on July 24th they plan to be open from 10am to 10pm every day of the week. Does anyone want to do pool to bet on what day the "We want to be sure we're delivering fun and memorable experiences to our guests so we have adjusted our hours to now close super early and also we'll pay you $20 CAD per hour please come and work for us" tweet goes out? Do you guys think it would be better to just pick dates and do the closest without going over or do like a super bowl box type thing where we randomize it to make it more fair? I'm thinking $5 a box (Canadian dollars to be festive) but I'm of course open to suggestions. If we're just openly picking dates I'm going with July 9th. It's a Friday so a great time to bury the story...

I want to believe that the log flume incident was due to them jamming 800 people into each log and maybe they should stop that. I don’t know if that was really the cause but I’m hoping it was. Also, I’m assuming that Jersey Devil never opened today because they dispatched all 4 trains Saturday night and none of them have made it back yet.

Dang I'm excited to see what this is going to be! Planning five years in the making! this sounds like its going to be BIG! I really have to wonder if this will be an Axis coaster if it has been in the works for five years. I'm sure during that time, S&S was in the preliminary stages of designing the Axis so maybe that is what this'll be, but I just feel like that's pushing it. I feel like whatever this ends up being will be the most expensive Six Flags coaster in recent history!

Stopped by for an hour on my ride home from Great Adventure. Got two backseat rides on Wooden Warrior. This little thing is always so shockingly fun and filled with some great ejector air moments. It might only be 35 feet tall but you're out of your seat 5 or 6 times and those Gravity Group restraints allow you to fly. I also took a spin on the Yo-Yo, a ride I had not ridden in probably 15-20 years. While it looks like a poor man's Wave Swinger, the seats rock back and forth like crazy when it goes around the tilted aide and actually starts getting a bit wild! Parking lot and field were filled. Wooden Warrior had a 5-6 train wait, flats mostly had a 1 cycle wait. I think most of the crowd goes to the water park. Great to see them getting a good crowd! Didn't intend on staying long, just a quick hitter on the way home. Hitting a nice family park like that after being at a Six Flags the same day makes you appreciate the atmosphere so much more. If you're ever looping through the New England parks, you're crazy to not stop here and hit Wooden Warrior. It's only 25 minutes from Lake Compounce and you'll probably drive right by the exit anyway. And you'll really appreciate Wooden Warrior after getting bashed on Boulder Dash.

Have to have a license to perform it in public. Different licenses for different types of performance, but still a license. And every band that records a cover has to have a license a license to do so. Oh and Disney will happily license their property for the right fee.

Poltergeist will be down after July 4th. New queue sound awesome. Should be done by Labor Day and read for Freight Fest the following week. Teased today is a "new signature attraction" for 2022. Scheduled to open behind those doors on Memorial Day. Coaster Rodeo 2022 will be June 10 weekend. This has been in planning for 5 years. Also selling bricks for the path to the new attraction coming. On sales next couple weeks.

I had the Fast Track Unlimited for my trip in 2020. It is indeed a wristband (with a RFID chip in it) that you need to touch to a panel in each FTU queue; that got kinda annoying since it didn't really work that well, but on the positive side most employees didn't care. As for how it actually works, yes, each coaster has a separate queue with a merge point where you join the regular line; none have designated seating. Where this merge point is varies by ride. From what I remember, Fahrenheit and Great Bear are the only ones where the FTU line goes all the way to the station. On SkyRush, Comet, Lightning Racer, Candymonium, and Wildcat, the merge is DEFINITELY right before the stairs/ramp to go up to the station. Storm Runner and SuperDooperLooper were closed last year, so I'm not sure where the merge is for those....and any of the other rides I don't remember. As for if it's worth it? If it's busy, which it will be, I'd say yes. Fahrenheit and Great Bear especially, but even on Skyrush you skip a large portion of the queue, and if you're not waiting for the front, it's definitely reasonable.

I know this isn't Castles N Coasters but looks like a new proposed park in AZ https://www.abc15.com/entertainment/events/mattel-adventure-park-joins-arizona-crystal-lagoons-project-coaster-go-karts-planned

Now get the fire turned on again on Apocalypse.

So....not tomorrow.

We had this exact concern with SWO back in October and it ended up being dead, they refunded our Quick Queue before we even had to ask and told us to just come back if it gets busier. I'm imagining they should handle it similarly at BGW if it's dead. I would expect for the park to be packed though regardless and they do occasionally sell out.

No, they make them good now. /ducks

They need to add a double helix at the end, that would be awesome!

Official Velocicoaster POV released!

Ugh, why does Missouri have to be so Missouri all the time?