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Park management has discussed their plans a bit with regulars at the park and events. Nothing is official until it happens, but the plans included moving the burrito place to a new building (nearly done), redo P305 theme, possibly an animal theme, to fit the area, and an International street refurb. Pizza place will move to the current burrito stand front of park. New ride and section on the right near Dinos. Dominator is being repainted with same colors this fall. Intimidator painting has started. Racer repaint next year. Sure this is always the case, but current management would like to go year round in the coming years. Rapterra looks cool. They have a nice display with the POV running all day at the front and near the ride showing it off to visitors. Looks really good in that area.

So apparently Mind Eraser has been fully painted and all "track reprofiling" has been done. I'm not sure what that means but we will find out next year.

Yesterday, Sunday, was great. They had everything open and most running 2 trains. Never really saw any lines. Haunt was fun. They do a good job on the houses. Much better than BGW. The scare actors were also more personable and interactive, inside houses and in the zones. Light sprinkles off and on all night probably kept many away. The park kept everything running. Small crowd but they stayed open til 11. We rode a lot more than we normally do now days because everything was a walk on and the ride ops were doing great. Very leisurely pace with a few meals and we still rode 25-30 rides on the coasters and drop tower. I'm told Haunt gets fairly crowded as October progresses. That's good. It's a solid event. If their current park development plans pan out, this place is going to be one of the best in the chain. The new wing coaster looks great. The park has said the plan is a 200+ coaster in the next couple years on the other side of the park and will not be a B&M.

A small teaser: New Efteling attraction Danse Macabre comes to life! (youtube.com) and making off have been released: Efteling making-of: Danse Macabre ep. 7 (youtube.com) opening 31st of October 2024.

Road Trip Day 6, Part 1 - Luna Park/Deno's - 7/18/24 If you want to catch up, Day 1 was King's Dominion, Day 2 Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Day 3 was Six Flags America, and Day 4 was Morey's Piers. Day 5 was a quick stop at Sesame Place followed by the rest of the day at Dorney Park. Reports are in their respective threads. The trip was myself and my oldest son, soon to be 14. I have to admit, my approach to Coney Island in general was pretty dumb to start. I had Google Maps route me to the park, naturally, and it did that well enough, though traffic was predictably slow. I then drove along the outside of the park looking for any parking and ended up blocks away, nearly out of gas, with the search entirely fruitless. Eventually I re-directed it to find me gas, which it did, and there while pumping it finally occurred to me to specifically search for Luna Park Parking. That brought us to a big, mostly empty, and surprisingly reasonably priced lot literally right next to the rides. Not my best moments on the trip, that is for sure! Also, this place is well known for being expensive and it was, so I won't bother complaining any more about that going forward. Soarin' Eagle -- After buying our wristbands for the day, we decided to get this one out of the way immediately. To my relief, it was either better than Time Warp or I was much more prepared to hold myself in place this time around. I think it was more the latter, but maybe this one just tracks better too. I am not about to ride either again to find out. "Better" does not equal good. What an uncomfortable monstrosity Zamperla cooked up with this design. I am thankful these never spread further. As easily placed and cheap clones, we could have had a whole bunch more of these than we did. Tony's Express -- Steeplechase was closed and would remain so for the length of our visit. This was a little disappointing as I like the launch on the one at Darien Lake, but it was not some huge loss. We decided to end to the closest far end of the boardwalk, which brought us to this Zamperla junior coaster. It was a predictably uneventful ride. That isn't to say it was bad though or anything. I bet younger riders will like this one a lot. It just isn't for enthusiasts. One note that I thought was funny: There are bins and out of habit I started to throw in the items from my pocket into them before boarding. The older woman running the ride objected and discouraged me from wasting my time with that. She is right, of course, in that a ride like this poses no threat of having stuff fly out of your pockets. At the same time, I have never experienced a ride op insisting I have my pockets full on a ride before! Thunderbolt -- I had heard terrible things about this good looking Zamperla thrill coaster, so my expectations were really low. Sometimes those are the best kind of expectations to have. It isn't that this is a good ride, mind you. It is janky and uncomfortable as hell with a weird and ridiculous restraint system. It is just that I thought it was going to be so terrible that I was pretty pleasantly surprised to find it was only kind of bad! If they could rework those stupid seatbelt sort of vest restraints, this would be a tolerable ride for me. They really dug into my shoulders in a painful way though and it wasn't like the thigh clamps were exactly comfortable either. Bad combo for sure. Circus Coaster -- This is listed as a family coaster, but it is more a kiddie coaster. We did our laps and got our credits. Cyclone -- Ah, the main event. The world famous Coney Island Cyclone. For some reason, this one took us a minute to find the entrance to and we ended up doing a lap basically the wrong way around the big structure before finding it. Oh well. Then, we boarded only to be stuck strapped in for about ten minutes as a maintenance man ran onto the track and did something before we got the all clear. Finally, we rode. I wish I could say I loved it like many do. It was a pretty mid ride for me, but I am on the bigger side for what can fit in this trains and I was pinned down by the restraints to the point that airtime was impossible to feel. Mostly I could just feel the laterals, which I rarely love, and the few really bad rough spots on the coaster. My son, who next to me had all the room in the world beneath the restraint, really loved all the airtime he got. I think this is probably a good ride for most. For me, I got a fun and out of control, but kind of uncomfortable and entirely airtimeless ride personally. Deno's Wonder Wheel -- The only non-coaster I am giving its own section to on the entire trip, I loved this classic ferris wheel. We rode one of the cars that does the drop and it was a wonderfully unnerving experience. I have been riding rollercoasters my entire life and have not found much nervousness and/or fear with any of them in decades at this point. When I find something that brings any amount of that back, I am glad for it. Deno's Wonder Wheel was very much that. It repeatedly felt like we were about to fall clean off that thing in the best way possible. Highly recommended. Phoenix -- This modern Vekoma family suspended coaster was one of the sneaky highlights of the trip. It was a glass smooth and forceful ride within the context of the family coaster category. As a plus, the ride operator sent us again when there was no one else in line upon our return to the station. When individual rides are as expensive as they are at Coney Island, that was a very pleasant surprise. Also, it is worth reminding anyone reading this in anticipation of a future trip, Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park is a separate business pretty much right in the middle of Luna Park. The tickets/wristbands that you buy at Luna Park will not work here. There were also two kiddie coasters here that we decided not to even go see if we could steal credits on. We had bigger plans for the day and didn't want to waste the time. Tickler -- As I like to do, I left the spinning coaster for last just in case it were to make me sick. It didn't. In fact, it didn't really spin much at all. Instead, the rotation sort of took the edge off the normally hard wild mouse turns and didn't do much else at all until we were on the very bottom level. As someone who doesn't like the hairpin wild mouse turns anymore and has never really liked spinning, I was very happy about all of this. I am left with a strange review of the Tickler to give then. As a spinning wild mouse, this thing faired pretty terrible. As I ride I would personally enjoy, it was better for those failures. The last thing worth noting was that there was a good little pop of air time dropping down to the last level that I didn't expect and enjoyed. From here, our plan was adventurous. We wanted to get to Nickelodeon Universe and maybe even Playland Park before it closed. Traffic didn't cooperate, unfortunately, and Playland Park ended up being cut from our trip entirely, so Nickelodeon Universe later in the day would be our last stop in the trip.