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Hope it's still cool to drop photo TR's in discussion threads... let me know if otherwise. Happy month of spooks! Yesterday I got to squeeze out some time to come check out the Pumpkins at Kentucky Kingdom event. Kentucky Kingdom's been doing a huge "family friendly" push this year, and this event certainly epitomizes it, imo. It's a night and day difference between 2019's HalloScream event with haunted houses, spooky sculptures, and even playing a shortened version of Friday the 13th movie in the 5D cinema. Now it's all about Pumpkins! Lots and lots of pumpkins! Frankly speaking, I think this event works really well for Kentucky Kingdom. It's a very local-focused event geared toward families having a place to bring their children without any worry of scares or safety issues (decent security and police presence throughout the park). There were multiple new shows in the park including a glow drumming show, a magician, and a country singer from Bardstown, KY named Will Wright. Thrill seekers can still get night rides on all of the park's major coasters (except T3, which is closed for the rest of the season). People of all ages were out in the park donning halloween costumes, and there were booths set up throughout the front circle of the park for kids to trick or treat at throughout the day. Here's something I don't think I've ever seen at Kentucky Kingdom before: a parade! The Glow Drummers as well as some familiar and new mascots marched the full front circle of the park twice a day starting and ending at the amphitheater. In front of Prof. John's Flying Machines, they cleared out some tables to put in a very small hay maze. The walls are just high enough that most kids can't see over. The two new shows playing in the amphitheater are Glow Drummers and local magician David Garrard (didn't catch his show unfortunately). They do two shows, a daytime show and a nighttime show. There's a second stage with two other acts, including Bardstown country singer Will Wright playing his songs between the carousel and Thunder Run. And last but not least... the pumpkins! And another friendly reminder, night rides are back as well! They're not quite the pitch-black rides you'd expect at other parks, but still nice getting to experience these rides during unusual hours of the day (and in the colder weather). I managed to be on the last train of the night on Storm Chaser which was also cool.

It was crazy busy at BGW this weekend, probably thanks to the College of William and Mary's homecoming and the Indigenous Peoples (formerly Columbus Day) holiday.

Surprised no one is talking about the rumors for the Fast and Furious coaster. Looks pretty imminent at this point due to permits being filed and concept art being leaked. Honestly I could do without the “drift“ gimmick and just get the west coast version of Velocicoaster. I’ll reserve final judgment when the plans are released. Nonetheless over the moon that USH is getting a legit coaster!!!!

LOL! That's my actual voice, although I was bit hoarse at the time.

Are you putting on a funny voice or do you actually talk like that?

Attended the press meeting on the opening day of Halloween On Liseberg last Friday. The opening begun with the vice president of Liseberg had to round up the scary clowns that escaped from Liseberg and loaded them on one of the "Paddan" sightseeing boats to bring them back to Liseberg... New for this year is a collaboration between Liseberg and Gothenburg Film Festival to show horror movies in Polketten. Also Balder premiered after 15 month of track TLC and it's back better then ever. 15 points of 10 possible And the Halloween decoration in the park was perfect as usual after the staffs hard work to transform the park from summer to Halloween in under 2 weeks.. /// Marcus On to the photos..... Vice president of Liseberg in her normal businesses outfit..... One of the new haunted houses for this year. Very good interaction from the staff Almost full moon.... Even the playhouse looks scary with long exposure time..... Not a nice rabbit... Luna footers... The hotel look really good in the dark.

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. . .

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.

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.

That's pretty much where Six Flags was under their previous leadership though, offering very cheap admission, memberships, etc, and while in general it seemed to work better than anything else in the last couple decades (comparing to the current situation, or the Snyder/Shapiro era...), that was where people started complaining about the crowds, six flags daycare, etc. The new CEO had the brilliant idea of raising prices to bring in a "classier" crowd. Results as seen.

Are you really making the claim that the park knew the ride was structurally compromised yet ran it with riders anyway? We're really doing that? Please, PLEASE let us know how you are so sure about that. I'm not talking about what you THINK happened behind the scenes, I want to know how YOU KNOW that is what happened. And before anyone comes at me thinking I'm rushing to Six Flags and/or Intamins defense for anything at all related to this - I'm just allergic to bullshit and the people who spew it.

If there is any justice in the world, it was struck with a wrecking ball.