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(I mostly agree that these two parks do not belong in the same conversation, but lets not get crazy)

The Universal annual pass an incredible deal when compared to the day ticket price. It’s an absolute no-brainer.

My plan over the next couple years was to finally start traveling to new parks and areas of the country I haven't visited yet. However, my wife talked me into blowing that plan completely to hell and instead we are now Universal Annual Passholders. Honestly couldn't be more excited...IOA is far and away my favorite park right now, plus we just really enjoyed the atmosphere at City Walk and Aventura (which is like...$120 per night with a season pass). Having a place in Florida to take $80 RT Frontier flights to every few months sounds good to me. Maiden voyage on our new passes is in 4 weeks, which will be my 3rd trip to Orlando this year (which is 3 more times than I've been to Agawam, MA this year if that says anything). Can't wait to race some dinosaurs.

Can confirm, there is indeed a wall built around Falcon's Fury and there's a notice posted on the wall saying (paraphrased) that it's down for refurbishment so it can be enjoyed for many more years to come, but due to the supply chain issues it is taking them longer than expected to get parts. I wouldn't expect it to be open until next year at the earliest. That being said, here's some other thoughts from my family's visit last Sunday, September 25th. This was my second visit to the park, but the rest of my family's first trip. We got there right at opening with the intention of making Iron Gwazi the first ride of the day. When we walked over to it, we were greeted with a line sprawling back the length of a football field and a sign up in front of the gate stating "We are working hard to get this ride up and running today!". So, um, yeah... and that's how Air Grover became our first coaster of the day instead. From there, we followed a circle path around the park. My son and I hit the 54" coasters in succession; Sheikra, Tigris, Kumba. All of them were running well. The lines at this point were still pretty short, so we were able to stay on for a re-ride on Sheikra, and we only had a 5 minute wait for the front row on Tigris. Kumba on the other hand was only running a single train, and although there was one family in front of us, it ended up taking about ten minutes for us to get a front row ride over there. My wife and daughter rejoined us to hit Scorpion and Sand Serpent before grabbing lunch. I pitched Scorpion to my wife as SooperDooperLooper's little cousin, as that was her first looping coaster, and to my surprise she actually enjoyed herself! The ride was running amazing without any rattling or headbanging, and it still had some serious bite to its forces. A heck of a lot of fun. Sand Serpent on the other hand, well, it was definitely a credit. We grabbed lunch at the nearby Dragonfire Grill. They honored the SWSA platinum pass discount and knocked about $15 off the cost of the meal. It was here that we learned about their new policy, which is no straws. At all. "Not even paper straws?" "Nope, we gotta save the animals." (Never mind the fact that their reusable cups came with those thick reusable plastic straws, which is more than Six Flags can say over the past few years.) Is this a chain wide thing now? I swear when we were at SWSD back in April, they still had straws there. Whatever. So I ate an ICEE with a spoon. Don't judge me. As the girls were wrapping up their lunch and my daughter really wanted to get some spooky face paint, my son and I headed off to the last 54" coaster of the batch, Montu. In case you didn't already know, he's a huge fan of inverts. His top three for the longest time were Talon, Banshee, and Alpengeist. This only recently changed when we went to IOA back in June and Velocicoaster took the #2 spot from Banshee. We got to Montu to find it a verifiable walk-on in the middle of the day, hopped in the back row, and headed out from the station. Instantly I saw the smile on his face begin to form, and he was laughing, screaming, and having a ball the entire ride. We got back to the station with his hair sticking straight up and he said "I think I have to take Talon out of my top spot." I asked him if he'd like to ride again but this time in the front row since there was next to no one there. We walked around, got back in line for a two-train wait for the front, and in his words "it was even better up front! Oh my god! There was so much going on!" So a back row ride was good enough for #1 and a front row ride firmly solidified that opinion for him. After Montu, my wife and daughter met up with us again for Cobra's Curse, a short ten minute wait from the room with the video projections. This ended up being my daughter's favorite coaster of the day. She wasn't expecting it to go backwards, much less start spinning! My wife handled the first two parts pretty well, but she isn't really a fan of the spinning parts understandably. The theming is pretty great overall, and it definitely stands out amongst the rest of the park's collection of coasters. Cheetah Hunt was up next, and this was the longest wait of the day for us at nearly one hour. I told my wife it was somewhere in between Hagrid (which she loved) and Velocicoaster (which she passed on riding). This turned out to be her favorite of the day, though there were some spots that caught her off guard. We all agreed it would be better without the overhead restraints, though. By this point in the day, it was about 4:30 PM, and we found ourselves back at the beginning of the park. Checked the wait time on Iron Gwazi which had now opened and it was posting a 45 minute wait. We all hopped in line, but my wife decided to sit this one out as well; she's not great with heights, having had bad experiences on her two hypers so far, and her only other RMC hybrid (Wicked Cyclone) took her about six months of contemplation to decide that no, she didn't like it after all. The wait time was significantly less than posted, with a mostly empty station up top, but it was definitely being hampered by the fact that they were only sending on average one train approximately every 5-7 minutes. Even still, we ended up only waiting 25 minutes after putting our stuff in the locker. The ride itself? My son absolutely loved it and has put it as his #3. My daughter unfortunately had the same issues she tends to have with most of RMC's trains, which is the seatbelt buckle digging directly into her thigh, which means every time there's any bit of airtime she winces in pain. I ended up focusing more on her throughout the ride and wasn't able to give IG my full attention, so I'm probably going to have to give it another ride before I can fully form my own opinion about it, but after that first ride I liked it more than Steel Vengeance but less than Twisted Timbers. I'm weird, I guess. After the ride on Iron Gwazi, we decided we didn't want to hop back in line a second time since our flight out of Florida was early the following morning. Instead, we called it an hour before park close, hopped back in the car, made a stop off the highway to grab some Waffle House for dinner as one does, and said our final goodbyes to this very cool park. We still prefer Williamsburg over Tampa, but I can see an argument to be made either way! And I'm pretty pleased with the fact that we were able to hit all of the park's coasters on a Sunday without having to shell out for any skip-the-line passes. Always a plus.

This will be interesting to see. I also wonder if they cut some height off or keep it world's tallest freestanding.

Maybe time for a title change for this thread, @tndank?

Ok, but if you hate it so much and it is so rotten; why do you keep going on about it and posting. Boycott and be done with it already. Nothing either of us says here will affect the progress. Accept it or don't. Calling a truce for the weekend, I have to get up and drive to KI tomorrow.

Well I wasn't comparing SF to Disney on a park to park basis, I was comparing two similar projects involving the same ride type that followed the same timeline to show that it was not out of the ordinary. Also, comparisons between them are proportional to the money and attendance at Disney versus SFSTL. My point was that all of this "discussion" has stemmed from a complaint that SFSTL is committing some major sin in taking several years to properly refurb a historic carousel, which was the plan from the beginning, and the implied claim that no other park would take that long and it's pointless and no one cares and yada, yada, yada. I have simply been refuting that claim. Also, as pointed out Disney doesn't hit a home run every time. I mean Tron is really just a clone. An elaborate clone perhaps but how long have they been working on it? 4 years now? Why is it taking so long? If Covid shut down is the answer to how slow it is going then why isn't that a good enough reason for the SFSTL carousel. Compare that to Velocicoaster which was also built during Covid and I think took something like 2 years and if you have not experienced it is beyond spectacular..................all I'm saying is that in my opinion the scope and timeline of the carousel project at SFSTL isn't as out of the norm as is being suggested.

working on Day 2 of Europa Park. . and whittled it down to ~300 pics (from over 500). . . struggling, as there are so many things in pics that were not in day 1, so it's not really a case of duplication. I'll try to get at least part 1 of day 2 (will have to do it in parts) up in the next few days. . and will try to whittle down a bit more. tho most are pics I find so good, I'm having a hard time. glad folks seem to be enjoying the report tho. couple of teaser pic from Day 2: from top of observation tower: yes. .I'm an Old fahrt. . .

An understandable decision. I'm a hardcore drop tower fan and I would have ridden it if it had reopened...but I definitely would've had a weird feeling about it, too. I'm sure it will be relocated. It's a brand new tower.

Not too surprising but kind of a bummer.

To be fair, Top Thrill Dragster did make an amazing case for why it's important to have great insurance.

A crummy commercial!? Son of a b****

Some quick disjointed thoughts from my family's recent trip two weeks ago, where we got the eff outta Dodge just before Ian touched down... My daughter just recently hit the 51" height requirement and was able to ride both Velocicoaster and Rip Ride Rocket. Unfortunately she didn't really like either coaster all that much; RRR was way too rough for her, and Velocicoaster (in her own words) "was too fast and made my cheeks flap in the wind". Go figure. She ended up loving Hagrid's though, as did my famously non-coaster-fan wife, who has now proclaimed Hagrid's to be her new number one coaster, dethroning Oscar's Wacky Taxi. We also got really lucky when it came to the wait time; both times, the wait was posted at 60 minutes, and it ended up being approximately 25 minutes from entering the queue line. We were able to get a mid-day ride as well as a night ride just before closing on Thursday, and Hagrid's in the dark was a phenomenal experience! We also knocked Pteranodon Flyers off the list, since it's probably my daughter's last and only chance to ride it before she sprouts up even further. Can we get more coasters that use Wave Swinger seats, please? Kinda funny though that she can ride the two most intense coasters in the park, yet an S&S drop tower with a 52" height requirement is just a step too far. They did give her a certificate after measuring up that can be used for a single-use Express pass on that ride once she gets tall enough, so that's a nice touch! Finally got a chance to ride the East Coast version of Revenge of the Mummy now that it's reopened from its refurbishment, and going in only with the West Coast version to compare it to, it's definitely the superior version of the two. I especially loved the fakeout ending! We did Halloween Horror Nights on Wednesday, the 21st with Express passes. We stuck around and grabbed a late lunch/early dinner at Finnegan's while they were closing off the stay and scream areas, and that afforded us the chance to knock out Halloween and Spirits of the Coven before the park officially opened to everyone. It was our first time at HHN and the production value on these houses was insane. Definitely clear though that they go more for repeatability over giving actors the freedom to improvise, since it seemed like a lot of the vocal cues were audio triggers in just about every house. With the express passes, we were able to knock out all ten of the houses in just under 6 hours. Favorite houses of the batch? #1, Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Wake. OMG, the scale of this thing... it took my breath away. #2, The Weeknd: After Hours Nightmare. It was certainly unique, nothing quite like it that I've seen at other haunts! #3, Halloween. I love the John Carpenter original and this house was very faithful to the movie, and Michael got me a bunch of times. Least favorite house? Hellblock Horror, which really didn't make much sense thematically at all... I guess, prison escape, but monsters, but then aliens? Sure, I guess. Special consideration to Bugs: Eaten Alive, which was really well done, but ew ew ew ew ewwww ick. And the Blumhouse double feature house was great, but if you haven't seen the movies, you won't have any clue just what the hell's going on there. Having my kids attempt to explain the plot of The Black Phone to me after walking through the houses was hilarious. "Sooo... I think if you touch the phone, you die!" Yup, nailed it. We had lunch at Mythos on Thursday afternoon, and just wow. The octopus... mmmm. So good. Loved the decor, all the food was top notch, would definitely eat here again. Absolutely one of my favorite sit-down restaurants I've been to at any park to date. We used our third day of the 3-day tickets to hang out at Volcano Bay on Saturday for a few hours, but we were pretty wiped out after doing Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom on Friday night. We only ended up spending about 4 hours here before calling it and retiring back to our hotel, where we got some lunch, reserved a lane for bowling at Galaxy Bowl, and just took it easy before heading to Busch Gardens on Sunday. Still one of my favorite outdoor water parks I've been to! Overall, we had an excellent time at Universal, though I really wish we had more time to spend taking it easy. Doing this trip with four people compared to two 100% made things tougher when trying to stay on schedule, and in the future, I'd probably make sure we had at least a full 2 days at each park to really be able to explore, see the shows, and take our time without being locked into a hard and fast schedule. We'll definitely be back in the future, though at this point, probably not until Epic Universe opens.

SFMM bridge to X2. I spent two minutes last time I saw her, so I guess I care a little.

It's a solid year, nice to have the event 'back to normal' with no plexi and the monsters back in your face!

If it's anything like Halloween Kills then it'll be a match made in hot horseshit. Seriously, how was Halloween 2018 so damn good but Halloween Kills one of the worst flicks in recent years?

It should have been "an epic battle between The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, and Brendan Fraser".