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I'm younger than you and I think Shockwave and Mindbender are the second best coasters in their respective parks. So I guess opinions exist or something?

I never realized how right you were until I looked back at these three pictures of Fury.

Anton died in 2001. Intamin's roots are traced back to Schwarzkopf Industries and also Hubert Gerstlauer left Schwarzkopf when they were having financial issues in 1982 to start Gerstlauer. If you track back every company currently manufacturing, its very rare to not find connections to either Schwarzkopf or Arrow. Both were the original innovators of modern coasters.

Just be wary of the turkey leg crowd next door to Xcalibur!

OK, that's enough of that. Everybody go to their respective corners and relax.

Did I tell you that KT looked up the Slush company and did get confirmation that Flamingo was "Strawberry Pineapple". We couldn't place the flavor but once we heard that it makes sense.

Oh my. The man died, son.

So apparently no one checks this thread too often, we were at the park today, arrived about 2:30, found out closing had been moved from 9 to 8 and unfortunately only got one ride on Boulder Dash before this happened around 5:30

... and we laughed and laughed

Interesting if true! Yeah? Too bad you're anonymous. I like water rides. The log flume at Europa was awesome. I liked Chiapas, as well. I actually like most log flumes. I just don't think they need to go backwards.

Great review and photos! Interesting to see a different viewpoint from the usual. We worked together at SeaWorld at one time, I think JTA brainwashed you into disliking (other?) water rides. I didn't realize Tripsdrill was going to be so awesome! I love weird stuff. Looking forward to my visit to these parks. Not trying to over hype things in my head, some pretty harsh realizations and opinions here, but obviously everyone is different and it is nice to hear the good and bad.

The ride ops at geforce staple the crap out of you which does make the ride harder to enjoy! Love your commentary on these European parks can’t wait to read more!

That was Shoot the Rapids, and Intamin log flume style ride. Opened in 2010 and closed in I think 2015 after an incident as described above. Smaller boats than Mile High Falls or Congo Falls, only like 8 passengers I believe.

I've been told that Saturday night is alright for fighting, alright alright?

Nothing on these forums gives me more joy than an Eric and Smisty trip report. Great work as always here. It's nice to read a different perspective on these parks than the usual reviews. I've always thought that Phantasialand looks really cool because of how much stuff they have crammed into such a small space, but have also thought that it might be kind of annoying in person? I don't know I guess it's more of a personal taste thing. If I had to pick one park in Europe to experience it would probably be Europa first, then Phantasialand and Eftling after that

Wow, I missed a lot in this thread. That was a fun experience. It’s fun watching so many professional engineers talk shop. As for the teaser, teaser campaigns aren’t really my thing but I hope the new thing coming to Wildwood Grove is trees because that entire area is absolutely hideous.

^ Your "full-service restaurant" order looked awesome! All of the rest of your tour - equally awesome!

As seen on Facebook earlier today! Looks like we have our first official attraction teaser for 2023.

I'm thinking a spring break 2025 trip will finally happen!

There will probably be a switch track, but the Spanish coaster community thinks it will be located almost at the end of the ride. The last element will be a vertical rollback and that switch track will be located right before that to take the train back into the station.

The amount of times that I've seen them fix Nitro by banging on the transfer track with a wrench and leaving is impressive. Maybe it's the coaster version of unplugging a router and plugging it back in.

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^ Holy hell, guy, it was a joke.

Let me preface, I love RMC coasters. Now, What was the new territory? All of their coasters have forces, negative and positive so what is so new about this one? They had already did wood on wood, steel on wood, steel on steel so what was the new territory they faced with Lightning Rod? If something is not reliable, it has faults. If it has faults, it's faulty. fault·y /ˈfôltē/ Learn to pronounce adjective working badly or unreliably because of imperfections. "a car with faulty brakes" So, as I was saying. . . Poorly engineered coaster with a faulty launch system.

^I definitely understand the surprise/shock factor of seeing the restraints pop up after hearing "All clear," but this is still a very different situation than "one of the operators almost dispatched our train with the restraints up."

It's the same people engineering in the same way with the same tools for all RMC coasters. So if one is poorly done they all are. Right? Or are you agreeing that something is different that lead to the usually great engineers to miss something? That's the point. Something is different. Doesn't mean it's poorly engineered, it means something new is affecting it. Something they have not had to account for in the past. And it seems they are still trying to figure it out. That's sort of how progress happens. The stuff discovered on LR will influence future coasters and make them better because of the lessons learned. As an example I'm sure with the data they have now they could build it with topper track and it be fine. But it was cheaper/easier/faster to switch to I-Box than to redo the structure. They will use that data on the next one though and not have to use I-Box. I'm just someone that understands engineering and how unknown effects can wreak havoc on an otherwise straight forward design. Where the new one looks virtually identical to previous work and something small and seemingly insignificant causes all sort of unforeseen effects. I don't condemn the effort because of that. And heaven forbid there are multiple issues, whether separate or connected (where item A works great, item B works great, together they don't work well). Fixing the track issues (and likely the wheel maintenance) doesn't resolve all the other issues. It doesn't change the cooling of the LSMs or make them work less hard in 95 degree heat. It doesn't resolve nuisance trips of the sensors causing ride shut downs. Engineering and problematic systems that take years to resolve (and related to my day job) And like LR they didn't just abandon the project because of those issues, they kept working on them despite calls from the public to give up.