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Have you ever stopped to consider the idea that maybe the reason that almost nobody (here or anywhere else) agrees with you is that you’re wrong and not that you’re just smarter than the rest of the world? Everything in life carries risk but you have a better chance of hitting the powerball than being killed by a tornado in most years.

Yay! Pantheon POV!

Enough of this insane conversation. It’s spiraling out of control. Let’s drop it. Edit: Not sure what part of “Let’s drop it” people don’t understand.

You’re acting as if we’re saying that there is absolutely no risk of the worst-case-scenario happening here. We’re not, but you have to weight that risk with other factors and put it in perspective and I don’t believe that you’re doing that because it’s what you’re surrounded by at work. In each of the last five years, US Tornado deaths have ranged from 9 to 76 per year. More than 38,000 people die every year in car crashes in America. You’re not suggesting that the park remove the parking lot to encourage other means of transportation though because you’re a storm chaser and not a DOT employee. You can’t close Disney 100 or more days per year. You can’t close every park in the Midwest multiple times a week for storms that may-or-may-not materialize and even if they do, have a tiny footprint and you’d have to be ridiculously unlucky for it to matter. Also, these are regional watches and warnings at regional parks so you’d just be sending people to other places or to their homes within the same warning zone by closing the park. Perspective…

Anything is possible in regards to making another SW:GE connection, but I seriously doubt that is going to happen with this Toon Town refresh. Look at the backstage infrastructure in the way, that was JUST built with SW:GE, and the distance that connection would have to be. It does not make sense to modify those buildings, block a backstage road during park hours, and waste prime expansion space on a single walkway. They could have made a connection, going through the new train berm, and avoiding the buildings, but again, that would have been done when that berm was made. And it's unlikely to be modified at this point (though I do think this would have been the best use of space option). I feel the only real way a connection would ever be made is with a SW:GE expansion into that area. With this new walkway built into the new structures. At that point, the backstage road could be trenched farther north, and an elevated walkway connection over it could be made.

Thank god you're running after thunderstorms and not running a massive tourist destination. You're now equating schools with entertainment options. C'mon, man. And finally now you're insulting everyone on this board with your stupid little sign-off quotes. Get bent. You might have some idea of what weather can do since you claim to be a storm chaser, but there are also legitimate meteorologists on this board who would also tell you to take a hike. Climb down off of your high horse and let people make their own decisions. You're not their dad. Edit - Furthermore, as an actual father myself, if my son told me they wanted to go ride coasters with the chance of a storm rolling through I'd tell them to keep an eye on things but to have a blast. Do you have the slightest clue how small of a chance there is of a tornado sucking you into the sky? I would hope you do, seeing as you're a storm chaser, right? Holy crap.

I would love something to break into the Jets game I’m watching right now and put me out of my misery. There’s an F5 shitstorm in the middle of MetLife stadium right now and it’s called the New York Jets. … anyway. I get it, storms are dangerous. If you want to talk about how these businesses like this need to invest in large storm shelters and comprehensive plans then I’m with you. Cedar Point putting up “storm safe” signs everywhere with little tornado icons on them when their plan is literally “I don’t know, everyone run in this bathroom I guess” that’s dumb but it’s entirely impractical to close Disney World 100 days a year and close every large venue in the Midwest any time there’s a chance of a tornado developing at some point that day.

Thanks, Bert! Not being on Facebook I missed that. That really looks crazy. I didn't know it was a thing to strip a wooden coaster down to the footers. Nice that they really want to improve The Beast!

it's still the 1st post on their Facebook page (Heightened Imagery) but here ya go:

Soooo. . . about that new coaster rumor.

There's a lot of evidence suggesting that more severe and unpredictable weather is going to happen more and more often in the future from Global Warming so it just isn't feasible for parks to close on maybes and forecasts for severe weather. Not just the loss financially but people with last minute cancelled plans are more likely to hit up social media or try and get a quick buck with a sob story on local news that can cause bad PR if the parks get it wrong and close unnecessarily. I bet no media would cover it and there'd be no positive PR if they get it right because that won't get views. Best case scenario is parks invest in shelters and increase employee training on severe weather training on how to get everyone off rides and queues into a safer area until a storm/tornado passes.

20 people died in the duck boat incident like 2 years ago, apologies that the locals here give a shit about other people during storms now. Yes everything carries risk but SDCs infrastructure is an absolute disaster and they need to fix it. It's my favorite park in the world but it's legitimately uncomfortable to visit on busy days.

I know I'm late to the party, but imagine spending extra money to ride Smuggler's Run. It hurts me to even think about that. Spend the coin on something worthwhile like Small World.

Also, a bit more perspective on Dollywood. We had some severe weather here. I'm talking trees down, back roads blocked because of damage, etc. They have trouble staffing the park without many of their employees blocked at home because they live in rural areas. In addition to opening later, they also warned staffing would be worse than normal and many things would be closed. And I realize it's anecdotal, but I went to HHN in Orlando this year. The day we went they were calling for severe weather and had Tornado watches in effect. Even locals were talking about how it wasn't going to be typical Florida rain on this day. It ended up raining for about 20 minutes around 5pm and that's it. Place was empty until the rain passed. Crowds were back to normal by 8 or so. I think it's fine they took a chance and opened. People can make their own decisions.

It is 100% not an exaggeration in Orlando. It’s probably actually low. Severe weather is possible almost every single day from at least mid June to mid September and tons of days outside of that. For other parks, closing parks on days where the weather is guaranteed to be crappy to save money has been common practice for years anyway but nobody is going to close on a nice day with a chance of evening storms. It’s the summer… Based on posted wait times, they were right for opening.

and here I thought someone "explaining to me" that a coaster built on part of the SFFT Parking Lot is NOT a Parking Lot coaster would be the most exasperating interaction I've seen today on TPR. Personal responsibility. the 20K+ people who went out to SDC can check the weather, and then it's their decision to go out or not. (or leave as a storm approaches) it's just silliness to say that the Park shouldn't have opened because their customers are too dumb to understand weather risk.

If a park can reasonably do what Dollywood did and delay opening when the storm is only an hour or two away to save money on staffing for 2 hours when nobody would be there that’s entirely practical and parks already do that all the time. Looking at Queue Times, the storm in Branson hit at 8pm, It was a busy day, Time Traveler got up to 80 minutes late that afternoon. They even reopened after the storm and still posted at 45 minutes. They weren’t going to close the day and they shouldn’t be expected to.

spent yesterday at an event at SFFT, and got to meet Dr. Diabolical, got an up close tour of the arrived track (only ~33% of it is on site already- the rest is coming soon), the Demolition in process of the interior of the "lab" area that the queue will go thru (that used to be backstage of the Sundance Theater), AND got to try Dr. Diabolical's youth elixir lots more stuff told / shown to us in regards to train design/track design - including the tidbit as to why B&M designed the first of it's kind 7 across coaster trains for SFFT. oh. . and park President Jeffrey Siebert also shared with us how the coaster name was decided, and what the least favorite naming option was in the poll they sent out and why they didn't go with it. Yup. . if the poll results were different? this coaster really could have been named: "Hell Horse" really. might do more of a full report over on the "bert goes to Texas Theme Park" thread. . but still, wanted to share the upclose pics of the Construction from yesterday. Note: the supports that are gold color, will get an aged/rusting patina applied before the ride starts to go vertical.. . so the color will be slightly different on the supports. enjoy: hard to describe, but very sweet fruit based drink. . tasked kind of like Pineapple/Papaya to me:

I was there earlier this year when it did sell out (a Sunday during the summer) and seen reports on other busy days like Spring Break when it sells out as well.

It was indeed the correct call and kept the most people safe. Active rotation didn't pass too far north of the park either.

Guess the park had better weather info than I did this afternoon, because here come the tornado sirens. Still a little surprised, they use to always pull everyone in anyway, but turns out to be the right decision tonight since they were supposed to be open 5-10

Nice! Yeah, we got a lot of skunks around here. Glad you liked Mamba! I agree the park itself is really beautiful. They do a great job of making you forget you're right next to an interstate.

I love how cliffhanger track looks. Love the poltergeist pictures - I will take this from Six Flags any day!

Michael Nesmith, formerly of The Monkees. Aged 78. R.I.P.

^I assume we'll see Lightning Racer go away at some point as that rarely gets a line and is in prime water park expansion area!