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My brother and I made our first visit of the 2022 season to Canada's Wonderland on April 30th, which was Opening Day. Below are some photos of the new facilities that have been built over the off-season, as well as the new large dining facility that is still well under construction, and some other changes around the park. Here is a look at the new dining facility under construction. It will be themed to a mountain lodge and will be able to seat many people when it opens. Here's a side view of the new dining facility. It looks to be massive from the ground and above! Nearby the new dining facility behind Wonder Mountain a new Coca-Cola Refresh station was constructed during the off-season. It is tucked away off the path and looks like it has always been there despite being brand new. In order to make room for the new dining facility behind Wonder Mountain, the Mountainside Bakery (formerly Cookie Café prior to 2016) was demolished. Instead of removing it completely, the park constructed a new building across the path which will be home to the new Cookie Café. Across the Windseeker in Action Zone, a new structure was built across from Windseeker. It replaced an older structure which was home to Fast Lane sales. I believe this new structure will serve the same purpose and possibly more! For the 2022 season, Dairy Queen is no longer at the park. The locations have been replaced with park-ran ice cream shops serving soft-serve ice cream and sundaes. Pictured above is the Swiss Dip shop on International Street. Below is Arthur's Sundaes & Cones in Medieval Faire. Also new this season, The International Marketplace Buffet in Medieval Faire has been retransformed to the All's Well Hall, which it was known as in the 1980s. I love seeing the park continuing to revert rides, attractions, and facilities to their original names over the past few years! Also, the Tim Horton's location in Kidzville has been replaced with Tree Top Café. It will now serve Starbucks. More photos from opening day can be found on my blog, Amusement Views.

A Sunday at the Food & Wine Festival Busch Gardens kicked off it's annual Food & Wine Festival last week. I went there on Sunday, May 1 to check out this year's new offerings and enjoy the company of god knows how many high-school tour groups (strangely enough, they're weren't all that bad as teenagers go). The weather was perfect that day--sunny skies and highs in the 70s--so the park was fairly busy (especially if you wanted to ride Pantheon in the morning). New to the festival is the Australia booth, which is in the back of Festa Italia. The Aussies boasted what I believe is the single most expensive item (not counting adult beverages) at the event--a wee lamb chop for $10.50! And, yes, you will see the word "Vegemite" on the menu. Greece was a sort of "new" country this year, as the park has offered a "Mediterranean" booth in the past. The menu was mostly a rehash of past years, but it did offer a new dish made with butterbeans. In the past, Italy was just a dessert stop. But they got a snazzy new booth this year, along with an updated menu. You can still get cannolis and a Caprese salad, but they've added a few new dishes this year. And, yes, Italy is located in Italy. Returning this year: Virginia, Hawaii, Mexico, New Orleans, Brazil, Jamaica, Japan, and Korea. There are plenty of bars, too, including the Sangria Garden (for those who like cough syrup with a kick). You can buy a 10- or 15-sample card. I went for the 15, as I know I can use it up before the Festival and it's cheaper than paying as you go. Overall, I think the food quality is better than last year, which seemed a bit "off." Most samples are in the $4.00 to $7.00 range. But a cocktail could set you back $12.00-$15.00 ( you can use the sample card for them). Let's take a walk around the park for the Food & Wine Festival. The Rhine River Cruise is running again, so maybe we can get some nice pictures of Pantheon while we're at it. Here’s the park’s staggered schedule from that day. Some of the Food & Wine booths open around 11:00, but they should all be open by 11:30. Hmm--looks like every high-school tour bus just emptied into Pantheon this morning. I think I’ll wait until the crowd thins out a bit before I test the patience of the gods, again. Pay no attention to this map. Greece is in Ireland. And here’s what you’ll find in Greece, which is in Ireland. This menu includes some items from the “Mediterranean” booth they used to have across from Pompeii (it’s a flower bed now). I think the butter beans are new . . . . . . but I had Spanakopita instead. (Please note that I have nothing against butterbeans.) I stopped at Japan for an oldie but goodie . . . . . . chicken gyoza. Japanese food always tastes best next to a bush of red flowers on a bridge over railroad tracks. I think I saw that on the Food Channel, or something. G’day, mate! We’re new to the festival this year. We’re over by the Roman Rapids, which haven’t been very rapid since 2019. Any chowderhead can cook sausages in beer. It takes an Aussie to use caramelized onions and Vegemite. They weren’t kidding when they called this a “lamb lollipop.” It wasn’t much bigger than a Tootsie Pop (tasted good, though--sauce has a nice kick to it). Confirmation that Da Vinci’s Cradle has gone from “permanently closed” to just plain gone. Just the queue, station, and some theming left. Looks more like a Howl-o-Scream maze now. Italy has a snazzy new booth this year. The Alfredo is the only new item this year, but at least they’ve learned how to spell “Caprese.” I’m not a big fan of olives, but this tasted OK. It was a bit too “gloppy,” though. This gets my Golden Ticket vote for “Best Name for a Theme-Park Bar.” You can get Jamaican food in Germany. But if you’re a hard-core rum enthusiast, you have to go to Canada. The new wine bar in France used to be the crepe stand. It's a "permanent" addition, like BarKastle. The Mexico booth isn’t new, but there was something there I wanted to try here. The Chili Chocolate & Horchata Mousse was pretty good--just enough chili flavor to make it interesting. And where there is Mexican food there must, of course, be margaritas. Or beer. Or both. You make the call. It’s nice to have the Rhine River Cruise running again. You even get something new to look at. You can get a nice view of the Rhine River Cruise from Pantheon, too--while you hold on for dear life. Watch Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, mess with these guys. Apollo says, "Hey, I'm such a cool god, I get a ride all to myself." . I think it was very considerate of the Roman gods to lean you so far over to the left that you can watch the river boats. And since we're in the neighborhood, let's finish with a picture of Alpengeist. I guess that will make at least one of our members very happy. Thanks for reading. Now go get some food and wine!

is this guy serious

I hope you have an experience similar to mine and your brain breaks. Seriously, that ride is so goddamned excellent that I couldn't form words until I was halfway up the exit ramp.

Hey everyone! I went to Six Flags Great Adventure yesterday, and on the way home I went to Coney Island on whim to check out the progress on the new rides. Also, I snagged credits for Phoenix & SkyFlyer at Deno's. The roller coaster (Tony's Express) is mostly done and the log flume (Leti's Treasure) still needs plenty of work. The pieces that still need to be installed are sitting right next to it, next to a bunch of construction equipment. Here are some photos I took:

I went to the park yesterday for my first ever visit! Loved the atmosphere of the park and was amazed by how they fit everything in the space. Cyclone was messy. No activity for the first couple hours the park was open. When we saw it testing we booked it there and there was a small line. Eventually it opened, and had one or two cycles with riders before it broke down. The ride operator told the line it would be a quick fix, it just needed to be released from the brake by maintenance. It was back up in 15-20 minutes. Again, one or two cycles with riders and then it broke down. This time there was no immediate reason given by the ops, maintenance came and shortly after that the ops said they were shutting down the ride and wouldn’t say if it was for the day or not. This was about the same time maintenance was pushing hard to get Lost Coaster open, so they didn’t work on Cyclone for a couple hours. We would walk by and see little activity. Eventually they were working on the top of the ride right before the first drop. While waiting for Hoosier we heard on the radio that they were going to open cyclone with one train, so we booked it there and were first in line. Shortly after we got there they started cycling consistently with maintenance riding. The ride operator told us that a train had ripped off a sensor right before the drop and that’s why the ride closed, that makes sense why we saw maintenance where they were. Eventually Cyclone opened and we got our ride, and it was running consistently for the two hours before I left. (At least from what I saw, it’s hard to see it operation from a lot of the areas in the park) As for the ride itself, it has major clearance issues, be warned. In the station they tell you to hold on to a bar in front of you, and I was thinking I’ve heard that so many times, it means nothing. Seriously, for half the ride, you will smack your hand on something if you don’t keep them in the vehicle. Something that shocked me - I sat in the front right seat of the car, and I am 6 foot 2. After dispatch you make a 180 right turn and then you start the lift. When you start inclining on the lift, there is track/structure above you and it was INSANELY close to my head. I ended up ducking a little to avoid it. I think I would have been fine if I didn’t duck, but it’s seriously that close. I would have closed my eyes and hope I made it if I didn't duck. The rider behind me said to me after the ride she wasn’t sure if I would have cleared it or not. Not so much that I care about the clearance, obviously if you stay in the vehicle you’re fine, but definitely worth noting. I can see an injury coming to people/kids not keeping hands in vehicles, but the ops made it clear to hang on the entire time. There's a wicked airtime moment in the middle of the ride, you get inches between your behind and the seat. Some wicked laterals too, specifically the last turn before the brake run. I think Cornball isn't ready for operation yet. I can't comment on Saturday, but it was closed all day Sunday and stated by the park entrance it was going to be. I saw lots of buckets and equipment on the track while riding Tig'rr. Speaking of Tig'rr, we found the train for Cascabel while riding. The flywheel looks like it's still on property. Steel Hawg got painted, and it looks great. HOWEVER, it looks like they cheeped out, because the paint is literally flying off. Whenever they sent a train it started snowing small pieces of orange paint and it is all over the ground in the queue. Makes me worried for Triple Loop repaint because that ride is a complete mess underneath any coat of paint they are putting on if they are using the same method as Steel Hawg. Speaking of Triple Loop, we saw them painting it. No train on track. The three curved drops are blue.

We went to BGT last Tuesday and had a nice time, but the details were pretty in line with what others mentioned before. We’ve lived in Orlando for a decade and have just learned to appropriately adjust our expectations the moment we set sail on I-4 West. What’s kind of sad is that I grew up going to BGW as a kid in the late nineties. My parents are in their 60s and I’ve dragged them to most of the major parks over the years. They haven’t been to BGW since 2001 but they still claim that is their favorite park. The place had (and still does have to a certain extent) a magical quality about it; especially for a young enthusiast. Then there’s Tampa. I actually give a slight edge to the Tampa coaster collection but for such a high profile park, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to the place where there weren’t at least 4 rides on the closed board plus more that are unavailable indefinitely. I had bought QQ earlier in the week because I had hoped to marathon Scorpion and The Flume. The latter has basically been closed all year. I asked Guest Relations if I could get a couple of one time skip the lines for next time but got a lecture about their closed attractions page on their website. To their credit, it’s up to date, but it changes last minute so I advise anyone thinking about QQ to wait until the day prior to purchase. Falcons Fury, Scorpion, and Flume we’re not listed to be closed a week prior to my visit. I quickly let it go but it was irritating. Whereas most parks have a “prime” season where everything is essentially opened, staffed and running decently well, I can’t tell you the last time or ever that I saw BGT run on all cylinders. There might be more coaster trains on the tracks and a shorter closed rides list during busier of the year, but there is always a sense of disorganization that is obvious to the average park goer and their TripAdvisor reviews are a testament to that. Still love the hell out of the park, it’s just an unfortunate situation.

you not only have no idea what the fuck you are taking about . . . but that you felt the need to drop BS Florida politics into the DisneyLAND thread? yeah . cements your stats as a troll. so I guess. . .

Well, that's okay. They still haven't opened a park that's an hour from your house with a drop tower and 5 coasters that are open 365 days a year.

Prices for the ferris wheel have been announced and they're actually not too insane. The wheel will open on April 13th and will offer incredible views of the Jersey Turnpike and the roof of the mall.

Hey barber, give me a Thanos Chin cut