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Fake news. Its winter on Lake Erie. Here:

Someone hold Energylandia's beer, please.

The 5-7 day Carnival cruises are actually pretty fun. You are usually on the better boats and it's mostly families. It's the 3-4 day booze cruises on Carnival that you want to avoid.

Zamperla has posted an update on Facebook of the log flume construction site where there will apparently also be a coaster or whatever… (They posted it as a collage, so this is as big as the photos get. Sorry)

With respect to your post about "not minding if they were to wait 5 years for another attraction", I believe they're putting in a new attraction next year in the form of a re-make/re-vamp of Fire in the Hole. There should have been a pretty large land clearing you saw while there. That's where it's going - from what I understand. I'm not certain what they're doing with the plot/area the current FITH is at. I agree with the charm, I think Dollywood suffers from that now, too. Could be staffing and supply chain issues, if I were a betting man.

^ find that VERY hard to believe, as the Holiday in the Park events bring in revenue. I'll wait for something official. . but certainly have a hard time believing they'd announce before the event is over in 2021, that it won't happen for 2022.

Beech Bend wasn't directly hit by the tornadoes, though at least one of them got within about a mile and a half of the park. The surveys aren't finished yet but most of the damage points have been plotted. (image source: NWS Louisville)

Well I guess that's one way to clear snow off the tracks.

Thanks everyone! I believe it was about a 3.5 hour drive to the 'New England Cottage" I booked through my Chase travel portal. Our group consisted of 4 guys, but Branson seemed to have a lot of cabins/cottages for a good price. If you can book where we stayed - definitely do it! https://bransonsnantucket.com/ The 'cottage' turned out to be a stunning little three bedroom house in this Cape Cod themed gated community on a hill overlooking one of the huge lakes and it was only a 5 minute drive to SDC. The funny thing is that it's mainly a time share - so I guess they have some inventory that if unsold/booked goes out to travel sites. When checking in we "didn't qualify for any of the couples activities" so being a group of 4 guys allowed us to skip any upselling/boat/show tickets, haha. There were 2 awesome restaurant bar restaurants offering crazy good deals for happy hour (I think 2 beers and a quesadilla was $15) and great views of the hills and water. Saturday Night we planned on just going into the park for the atmosphere, hoping that we could get a ride or two in on Time Traveler and Outlaw Run, but that Saturday night was one of the busiest days in park history, we learned the next day. It was so crazy Saturday night that even people we had the Time Savers/Fast Pass were leaving early - and we had some gifted to us for the last 2 hours of the park opening. With 1 train ops both days and lines closing early we were just able to get 1 ride on Time Traveler and one or two on Outlaw Run before the park closed. With a 10pm closing I'd bet the ops didn't get out until after midnight and the frustration was pretty clear on the op's faces. SDC and their clocks... Outlaw Run at night simply must be experienced! Wow. Even thought it's short on length, to me it feels like a complete top tier coaster. ~ Sunday! Surely all of those good ol Branson folks will be in church leaving the park open for ERT in the morning right? Wrong! It was a solid wait to get in to park and we headed straight for cinnamon bread at opening. It's been a while since I was at SDC but I didn't know that they held church services multiple times on Sundays, so there was already a healthy crowd in the park. Cinnamon Bread took about 30-40 minutes to get, the line was just outside of the door. I already ranted about this but the new location has the workers making bread, deserts, cashiering, anddddd nowww making Starbucks drinks. It just takes forever now that the workers have the juggle a number of tasks which leaves the warm cinnamon bread getting cold while you wait to get through the line and pay. Many of the fall featured food items ended up being sold out by the time we had waited in a 15-20 minute line to get said item - you only find out at the window. All around I am not sure any of us had a meal at SDC that stood out, which was a bummer. One train ops run as fast as they could all day but it was still busy and we had pre-purchased time saver to get in as many rides as we wanted to. The lantern tour was truly a highlight, it was very informative, entertaining, fun ghost stories, it was just a long tour. I don't mind tours going over the pre set time, but the lantern tour started at 5:30, ending at 7pm with the 9pm closing. Since the tour went long, we didn't get out of the cave until after 7pm which left us in a bit of a time crunch to get dinner and night rides. It didn't help that again the lines closed so early without warning - Time Traveler closed around 8pm. But it was very obvious the staff was overworked and wanted to go home. There were a few times a certain crew lied to other guests telling them 'this is the last ride of the day' and 'maintenance will be here to put the ride to sleep by the time you're back' but the coaster ran until a few minutes before close. It was great to get back to Silver Dollar City. I know the charm seems to be a bit lacking this year and I understand long time fans are missing some of the old nostalgia that is slowly fading away. A crazy busy year combined with lack of staff that is sure to showcase a park's imperfections and I'm excited to see how they are going to refresh/rebuild some of the current attractions. It was too cold for Mystic River but wow it looked incredible. This is the original Cinnamon Bread location right? Woops, guess they moved! Ah, here you are. They're featured on the Today show now, so everyone knows about it. There's t shirts, coffee cups, all sorts of commercialized stuff to buy. Here it is, just getting cold while I wait for 3 employees to make/serve the bread, cash people out, and make Starbucks drinks. I wish they would separate those just getting bread from those getting coffee and bread. This seems like a great place to have breakfast. This whole area is simply beautiful. It's amazing how huge this attraction is. Holy shit there's actually people on it! So it was about 47* this time in the morning... but the water is 52*! Come on in yall! If you saw my Insta/or others, there's a guy who's only job is to sit at the base of the drop and tell people at water cannons how many people are on the incoming raft. You have a high likelihood of coming off this ride drenched due to splashes or most likely, full pressure water cannons haha. So so pretty day or night. Okay so yeah, definitely too cold for Mystic Rivers, so let's get to the main reason I'm here! Still flying through those barrel rolls into the brakes. There were still plenty of leaves on the trees mid October, the weather was really nice! Outlaw Run front seat just hits different! About to be chucked off a cliff into the Branson hills! Look at how open the front seat is. The views are amazing and I love how you take the inversions in the front. You've gotta come ride this beast! One train ops everywhere, only one arm working on Barn Swing..... Fire in the Hole has some fun drops but this ride is currently in 'ultra creepo' mode since many lights, sounds, and theming are not working. At times it's just....quiet. So you just hear the ride and the smell of that building.... freakYYYY! The wait time for Powder Keg was comically long. With one train, and this is the only crew that had slow ops - but the ops seemed to be pieced from other rides (different costumes). I just felt bad for the regular line - it was probably 2-3 hours. Powder Keg just didn't seem to have the punch I remembered and the rest of the layout is more of a family coaster. IF there's one SDC coaster I wouldn't mind leaving, it would be PK. You certainly are an interesting one! One of the best settings for a coaster, here we are! The park is seriously missing a lot of charm. I really really hope they bounce back in 2022. Seeing the inversions at eye level really lets you appreciate the size of the cobra roll. Awesome first drop, smooth, forceful. "Oh, I've never done American Plunge! It doesn't look too wet! And it's a walk on!" .. .. . . Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu Even when splitting our 4 into 2 logs, we all goat absolutely soaked and the initial shock and cold was so intense I think my scream scared all of the bats out of Marvel Cave. That was a baddd decision! Thankfully it was approaching the warmest part of the day and my flannel held shed some water but we were all soaked. Hell no we were not about to double down on Mystic Rivers! Let's go back in time to reverse that bad idea. Looking back, I enjoyed TT better during the day - I think you feel the spinning a bit more. Flooded Mine seems to be in good shape! There's some impressive effects that surprised me! Getting close to dinner time, the Time Saver line dropped down to just a few people, so we took advantage of that with 3 quick rides before our Lantern Tour. I don't think there was a single ride where we didn't have people coming out of the Time Saver line. The entrance is really squished in next to TNT so were people just mixed up or just not paying attention? Every ride is so different - front to back, the different weighted cars, man just so much fun! Bigger in Texas? Pfffttt come to Branson! You know you're in for a good time if you're here! The lights are about to go... Out! Definitely worth the $15 for the lantern cave tour if you're brave enough for it! So much to learn about and explore. So happy everything worked out how it did to make SDC what it is today. You have the historic cave, new tech in Time Traveler, Mystic River, classics like TNT, Fire in the Hole, Wildfire. I wouldn't mind if SDC didn't put up a new attraction for another 5 years and just focused on bringing back the charm, organizing the food & bev better, and paid employees more to ensure for a better attraction experience. No one wants to be stuck listening to the clocks ticking for more than 15 minutes! Thanks for reading! -Zach

Here's mine at home!!!!