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We ended up visiting Busch on Saturday as well! However, we apparently just missed y'all. The original plan was going to be for us to drive down from NJ leaving early afternoon on Friday, hopefully make it to the park in time to grab some night rides on Pantheon, and then do a full day there on Saturday. Needless to say, 95 did not agree with our plans, as per usual. When we realized that even with a best case scenario we wouldn't make it to the park before they closed on Friday night, we made a pit stop at the Applebee's in Ashland, VA just a few miles away from Kings Dominion to grab some dinner. Ugh. I really should have known better. Saturday morning, I woke up and felt like absolute hell warmed over. It felt very similar to a bout of food poisoning I got a couple months ago, and so, cursing the shrimp and steak from last night, I retreated back to the hotel bed praying that I wouldn't throw up. Thankfully, the feeling passed after a few hours, I managed to down some solid food, and by 2:30 PM, I was feeling good enough to try for the park. So my son and I hopped in the car and swung by. Obviously at this point our first stop was Pantheon, and at this point, we were greeted with a reported 60 minute wait time. Since we lost most of the morning, we decided to invest in the Quick Queue Plus which included a one-time ride on Pantheon as well as Tempesto and Invadr (honestly, not sure why these two are still single rides only, but whatever). Was pleasantly surprised to see that they honored the discount from our SeaWorld San Antonio platinum memberships, and we ended up getting the QQs for half off! After a brief bout of planning, we decided on our course of action. We would save the quick queue for the evening, hoping to get a ride on Pantheon with their awesome lighting package we've seen elsewhere. We decided to hit up Apollo and Tempesto first before hopping in that hour-long line for Pantheon. Apollo; still great after all these years. Tempesto; damn you, "comfort collars". Crossing back over to Pantheon, we walked into the queue which was still posting up 60 minutes at the entrance, only to discover that the line was moving MUCH faster than advertised. From us getting in line to getting on a train, it only took about 25 minutes! At this point, I do want to note something. I'm pretty goddamned blind without my glasses, and so, I've been wearing a strap for them on every ride I go on. Pretty much every park I've been to, this isn't a problem. If someone asks, I tell them and/or show them that I've got a strap, and that's the end of it. Unfortunately, that's not the case with Pantheon. JUST Pantheon. Apollo, no problems. Tempesto, same. Pantheon, even with a strap, they are considered to be a "loose object" and need to be removed. I was a little bit upset about this, but complied, and after the ride was over, one of the employees took some time to discuss the situation with me. Apparently the story is that during the preview weekends, they were allowing people to ride with them, but during opening weekend, reps from Intamin were on hand and they put the kibosh on it. So unfortunately Busch's hands are tied in that regard. With that out of the way, I want to say that Pantheon is an incredible ride. I haven't been on Velocicoaster yet so I can't really compare the two, but from start to finish, it was absolutely thrilling. Lots of great moments, from the inversion right out of the first launch, to that swing launch with unexpected backwards airtime, to the trio of hangtime from the spike, top hat, and final stall inversion. We ended up riding it three times over the course of the day and it simply didn't disappoint once! I would probably put this in my top five, once I figure out what the hell the rest of them actually are. After we finished up our first ride on Pantheon, we backtracked through Italy to get to the England skyride station, and took that over to France. By this point in the day (probably about 4 PM?), Griffon was indeed open and serving up screams. We got the middle of the front row and this ride is always a pleasure. I know a lot of people hate on dive machines for whatever reasons, but this still makes me laugh and smile every single time. From here, we used our single ride on Invadr, which sadly was running a lot rougher than it had felt in previous years. Not bad by any stretch of the means, but noticeably rattly compared to opening season or its past few years. Even though the lines were minimal, we decided to not go for a second ride. Next up was my favorite invert and my son's 2nd favorite overall, Alpengeist. They ended up moving the Quick Queue entrance point for this so it merges into the station, instead of being around the exit side of things. We did two rides on this and at that point I felt like I had reached my limit. Given my stomach's sensitivity from earlier in the day, I didn't want to push it any further. From here on out, we made our way over towards Oktoberfest. We did a quick ride on the bumper cars, then noticed that although it was listed as being closed out front, Mach Tower was testing! We hopped on the next cycle and were rewarded with excellent views of the entire park. Then it was over to escape the Black Forest with a ride on Verbolten. As much as I miss the nostalgia of Big Bad Wolf, I really do think Verbolten is a fantastic replacement and a lot of fun. We backtracked a little bit to Germany to get a ride on the carousel, then with the skyride being temporarily stuck, decided to take the low bridge across the river to get to Loch Ness Monster. This was running surprisingly well this year and didn't have too much headbanging. By this point, the park had cleared out considerably. The sun was setting, temperatures were dropping, and crowds had thinned. We trekked back to Festa Italia, got our first night ride of the season on Apollo, then used our quick queue for the second ride of the day on Pantheon. At this point it was 8:35, and we decided to try our luck at a third ride before they closed off the line. We ended up riding in rows 4, 7, and 11, and there wasn't a bad spot out of all of them. To be honest, I preferred row 11, mainly due to the height on the spike, but I wouldn't complain about sitting anywhere on the train. This was also in effect at Pantheon, where Row 4 was the designated QQ lane. But when we were there in the evening, if the row was empty, the ride op on the mic was calling for volunteers to fill in. "Oh, let's give it up for purple sweatshirt and blue t-shirt! Wooooo!" Granted it could have just been because everyone wanted to get the heck out of there earlier, but they weren't sending out any empty rows during the night rides. For what it's worth, neither Verbolten, Griffon, nor Alpengeist had this rule in effect - you could choose any open row, mainly because the QQs let you into the station rather than through the exits. All in all, it ended up turning from what looked like was going to be a complete wash into one of the best days we've had at BGW! Fantastic start to our 2022 coaster season.

My son and I ended up visiting KD on Sunday! It also ended up being pretty dead during the four hours we were there (11 to 3). Fast Lane was not only not necessary, it would have been a total waste of a purchase. With the exception of Twisted Timbers and Tumbili, we were able to get on every ride on our list as either a walk-on or a station wait. At opening, we power walked over to Tumbili to get it out of the way before the lines got too long. Apparently this only has two trains on the track, which was a little surprising to see. I absolutely agree that Tumbili flipped a TON. I've been on the similar free spins at Great Adventure, New England, Discovery Kingdom, and the Texas parks, and the only one that came close to this was the one at Fiesta Texas. And this was more insane than that! After getting some hangtime on the first dip after the lift, we did four full rotations in a row going over the first major drop, then got another two full rotations in the opposite direction on the second major drop. It legitimately felt like we were on a Zipper on rails. It's easily the most intense one of its kind that I've been on to date, and was a real shock to the system considering I went in with zero expectations. Definitely works as a good replacement for the Crypt... now here's hoping they can get a replacement as equally good for the missing coaster across the way. Once we got off, we hit up Reptilian (first public train of the day). Love the repaint! Clearly though there must have been a sale on orange paint this past offseason, between Avalanche and their Scrambler getting the orange coat, not to mention all the random rides throughout the Six Flags chain that have gotten orangeified. Afterwards, we made our way over to Flight of Fear to be greeted with a completely empty queue. We got a front row ride with a station wait, then a reride in the back row with no wait at all. 305 was up next, and I guess I must be getting soft in my old age because I'm finally starting to grey out a little on that pull out from the first drop. Still, two rides in a row here as well! Love this beast of a coaster. Afterwards, we knocked out Anaconda and Backlot Stunt Coaster in short order. My son wanted to do Delirium as he hadn't been on a pendulum ride in some time, and we got on with no wait, only for the ride to shut down due to another rider accidentally dropping their crutch over the edge of the platform. They had to completely turn it off and wait for maintenance to retrieve it, otherwise it could have been crushed when the platform lowered. Rather than waiting around for that, we ended up heading over to Racer (1 train wait, only 1 train on the blue side running). Not a ton of airtime on it this year, might have just been because it was still relatively early in the day and early in the season. Hopefully when we visit again in the summer it'll be back to its usual self. Next on our list was Twisted Timbers, the only ride to have a significant line all day. When we entered through the queue, the line was back to where the wrecked pickup truck is, and it was pretty slow moving. Couldn't help but notice that most of the trains being sent out had between 3-5 empty rows in them. Unfortunately after about 10 minutes of waiting in line, it started moving quick... and that was because the ride went down for maintenance and they were clearing out the line. Instead, we took a short detour over to the antique cars, then back to Delirium which was up and running once more. While on Delirium, we saw that TT sent a test train through the course, so after we got off the pendulum, we hightailed it back to find a completely empty queue. This was also our first experience with the new locker system, and suddenly, it made so much sense as to why most of these trains were being sent out with empty rows. Only two of the three kiosks were active, and the process to rent out a free locker took about 60 seconds. I can definitely see this being a huge bottleneck on busier days. We did one lap on TT before realizing we were running up against our self-imposed time limit of leaving by 3 PM. We were trying to make it back home to northern NJ by dinnertime. (Well, 95 had other plans.) And so, we decided to head back towards the front of the park and make Dominator our final ride before hitting the road. Still our favorite floorless! Overall, even though we were only at the park for 4 hours in all, it was 4 hours well spent. Great to get back to one of my favorite parks for the first time this year and hope to be back down many more times over the next few months!

Argument? I see a panel of experts conducting a serious investigation.

Hired, not fired. Small but important distinction.

The trick with free-spins is to staple yourself so you can't move around too much. Once I started doing that I began to enjoy them. I don't love them but I'll ride them if I'm in the mood. The good thing about them is they're all really short. The missus, who is iffy on a lot of rides/coasters absolutely loves them. The one @ SFNE is my favorite so far, it just ran well and I was in the mood for it when we rode. I generally skip ours @ GreatAdv, for the same reason I skip Superman most of the time - we just have better coasters.

On Monday, April 4th, Canada's Wonderland announced that all festivals and events are back for the 2022 season including three new food festivals celebrating Portugal, Ireland and The Caribbean! More details about upcoming events can be found on their website!

I'm not the biggest fan of the free spins either, but lately I've been taking the approach of stapling myself to oblivion on them to prevent sliding around, and it's actually helped. Tumbili was an enjoyable ride.

Yes, I absolutely love them. They're friggin wacky and I hit the brakes with an ear-to-ear grin every time. No ride has ever made me scream with terror and laughter as much as a freespin.

New artwork released by Disney! It's a new dining area near (the future) Arendelle: World of Frozen in the WDS Studios.

"Heart of Stone" ......from the Studio Cast CD of SIX. The Broadway SIX.

Agreed about KD being freaky at night when its empty. We've walked from I305 to the entrance at 12-12:30 at night after marathoning I305 in the dark during Haunt and between the music and the dark, empty, fog-filled paths I don't know if I've been nearly as creeped out at any other time in a park.

Along with seat belt backup, that tower also 'tilts back' prior to (or just entering) brake run so high G's are pushing body straight down into seat. It really surprised me Icon has their tower hit brakes still tilted forward, which puts extreme amount of force on the exact portion of OTSR's which allowed guest to slide out. Prior to accident I assumed it also tilted back during drop, but nope. *of course we'll only know reasoning after full investigation. Video and picture clearly shows how high OTSR's were prior to ride, and moment he slid out was when braking started.

^ and I always tell folks to ride Wave Runner (the scrambler) at SFFT. . . they run an insane cycle on that. There's a reason the motor has to be replaced so often. the only one I've been on that's ever come close to how crazy Fiesta runs theirs, is the one at Six Flags America - which proved to be one of three highlights at that park for me (the other being Joker's Jinx, and Ragin Cajun - the spinning mouse that was way better than I expected). Bringing this back to SFStL tho. . .I really enjoyed Colossus, the Mine Train (a pleasant surprise), and several of the other flats there, as well as the other standouts I mentioned earlier. Even the taxis were fun, although the ride pad has shrunk so much. Honestly, the only "dud" that I absolutely hated in the park was Ninja. Which is a shame, because it looks so good, but rides so rough.

Webcams--sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Relax. In the meantime, you could do something useful in your community, such as set up a window display on public safety, or visit a dairy and learn how milk is prepared and handled for market. Just a suggestion.

^^Most likely to that it doesn't overshadow MF. But I think that the 5 extra degrees on the drop will make up for the 5 feet shorter in height. Though you probably won't really be able to tell the difference on the ride. One thing that seems curious, though (and it may have already been brought up - forgive me if it has) - both i305 and MF have a drop of 300 feet - how does MF go faster? I mean, MF is only ~3 MPH faster, but it just doesn't make sense regarding physics... Did you put that double meaning in there on purpose?