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DavidB

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About DavidB

  • Birthday 08/05/1982

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    St. Louis
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  1. I have a couple questions for those familiar with the park. I'm in the St. Louis area, and a HORRIBLE pseudo-enthusiast who has never been to SDC. I know...pretty ridiculous... but here are my 2 main questions: -The last few years as I've considered visiting multiple times, I've always wanted to come for the Christmas event. All the lights and everything are in full swing from the start of the event, correct? I'd hate to come for my first SDC Christmas experience and not have everything going because it's early/mid November. I likely won't try this weekend because it looks like it will be too cold for all the coasters to run, but the first weekend warm enough, I'd like to take a crack at it. -Which leads to my next question. Is this the type of event that gets more and more crowded the closer it gets to Christmas? This was the other reason I am thinking of going as soon as possible. I'm really looking forward to experiencing this park for the first time, seeing the lights, eating as many different things as my stomach will allow, and riding these highly regarded coasters. I am pretty averse to waiting in lines at this point, so will almost certainly get the Trailblazer pass. Any insight from regulars on these questions would be greatly appreciated!
  2. What is it about our park that these cororate people hate??? Honest question.
  3. ^With the exception of Eagle being closed for the rest of the season, the rest of this is fantastic news. Those games buildings are so crappy, and having the entrance to Screamin Eagle in there always just seemed like kind of a slap in the face to a beloved ride. Maybe the Eagle "ground art" in the queue will get a refresh too...
  4. I would be all for a retracking and rehab on The Beast that keeps most of the course identical but updates a bit of the ride. Maybe shortening or eliminating the brake shed and adding a floater hill and a mild reprofiling of a turn or 2 to allow them to be taken at higher speed and reduce the need for trims currently in place. Nothing too extensive but enough to freshen up and smooth out the experience.
  5. Not exactly the same thing, but I miss the days when Cedar Point had a DJ in the lines for the big rides. It made waiting in long lines more tolerable in the days before cell phones and Fast Lane.
  6. I've done it that way 4 times over the last 3 years. It definitely is a long day, but it's nice having not spent the extra money on a hotel and additional food. And it is extremely nice and rewarding to get home and sleep in your own bed after such a long day. The way it has worked out I went on two of those trips on Sundays late in the season, and twice last year so the park wasn't open late AND didn't really want to stay in a hotel anyway. As with KC, I'll sometimes bundle KI with a concert and obviously spend the night in that situation, or if I go on a day when the park is open longer hours, I'll spend the night. If I had my way and no other commitments, I'd be visiting almost exclusively on Haunt Saturdays...
  7. ^This is pretty much where I'm at too. They are just different, but both high quality experiences. CP is almost always a 2-2.5 day at the park kind of thing where I'm staying on site. KI is frequently a LONG one day turnaround 5.5 hours there, at the park from noon to 8ish depending on the day, and 5.5 hours back home. That way my only real costs as a platinum pass holder are gas, food, and fastlane. I really enjoy both parks for what they are and probably would say I like CP more, as it's just more of a full experience. KI is fantastic too, and I'm excited to try out Camp Cedar and hope it gives a little bit of that experience feeling I get from CP. As for WoF...I never go to KC just to go to WoF. But I do go to KC from STL pretty regularly to go to concerts and will include something like 6-8 hours at WoF before the drive home on most of those trips. The rides certainly aren't the best, but none of them I would consider bad, and the park is very pretty and usually not very busy, and if you need fastlane it isn't very expensive. I really like going to WoF just for a nice slow paced park visit where you don't feel like you're missing something if you're not busting your ass to get to everything you want to do. It's never the main attraction for me in KC, but I like it alot as an extra stop.
  8. I'm hopeful that this $20/hour thing goes over so well that the park is able to realize some actual value from paying the employees more and it results in drastically improved operations and in park spending. After all, "with so many gold passes out there", you'd think they need to have people spending money as frequently as possible, which they can't do if they are in line for food for an hour at a time. Wishful thinking...but I'd like to go that last scheduled full week of operations and hope the park isn't as much of a disaster by then.
  9. Sadly, HWfan is no longer with us as of maybe 6 months ago. Very unfortunate. I believe Screamin' Eagle has the ACE coaster landmark designation and I think it would be able to keep that. The coaster classic designation is the one that requires original rolling stock, mechanics, etc.
  10. I was born in 1982 and definitely rode with the old trains but that's literally all I specifically remember...being in the old train, then the difference after they changed. I also remember wanting to ride Jet Scream and not being tall enough...and it was gone in the next year or two and I never got the chance.
  11. I could be wrong but I believe it was modified many years ago. In the early 90s when it was changed over to ratcheting lap bars and seat dividers. At the time the park advertised this as new trains that made the ride faster. If remember correctly they claimed 70 mph, which seems unlikely in reality. But I believe there were modifications made including the removal of a hill towards the end of the course and banking of the turn around off the lift hill.
  12. I went the weekend before last and wasn't going to do any sort of report or review, but with this discussion, I'll throw my hat in the ring. I thought Orion was fantastic. Millennium Force is the only other giga I've been on. I hesitate to say Orion was better...but definitely different experiences. I would say if you're looking for excitement, Orion is definitely ahead in that category. The airtime is strong, and the elements are exciting. I would take it over Diamondback hands down, and I like Diamondback. While there are obviously less "airtime moments" on Orion, they are undoubtedly stronger. Yeah, you fly into the brakes way up in the air and there's definitely momentum left on the table, and of course at that point it would be great if there was more to it, but in my 3 rides I never felt like it was short like the feeling I got with SFGAm Goliath. I can't help but feel like the people that have complained about this thing love the smell of their own farts. The rest of the visit was great with fastlane, because of course it was. We got on everything except Adventure Express because it was down for part of the day. Some of the rides had waits (Orion 30 min, MT 20 mins, Beast 20-30 mins towards nighttime) because the park was pretty crowded, but can't complain about those waits knowing how the standby lines were. The atmosphere was still good with the decorations and everything was done well. The haunts aren't my interest at all, but I do enjoy the Halloween atmosphere. I was with a friend and his step daughter who never had a proper experience with the Beast. I believe they had only been to the park once before and weren't impressed with it. We went and rode too early and it was still fairly light out and just let the grouper put us in the middle of the train somewhere. We went and rode Diamondback and I insisted we go back to the Beast for our last ride, asked the grouper for the front, and had them ride up there. My buddy told me afterwards that he had told his step daughter not to say anything bad about it because I wanted to ride again and they were again unimpressed with our first ride. Obviously that opinion changed entirely with the front seat night ride; they loved it and he said something along the lines of "that's the only way I ever want to ride that again." I always enjoy sharing experiences like that with my friends. Still love Banshee as well, and don't understand some of the hate it gets...great speed, with sustained forces and decent intensity. I prefer this to Raptor...and think Banshee and the Batman clones are my favorite inverts. Had the back seat on Racer this time, and it beat the hell out of me...I don't mind some jostling, but it was not a good time. I had a better time with KI than CP a couple weeks earlier, at least this year. Hoping the forecast for this weekend trends a little warmer over the next couple days as if it's going to get up to about 60 I'd like to go again this coming weekend. I really do love this park.
  13. I'm with you here, I've been 2 different days with fast lane at CP this year, and it's the least I've ever had to wait at the park. Especially the ones where the merge is at the station. Literally walk up and get on the next train or 2 almost every time. Also agree, Fastlane is fantastic at KI.
  14. It isn't ideal, but it definitely wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Of course, I already had fast lane the previous day so it wasn't as important as it may have been without. It really wasn't too big of an inconvenience, and I'd definitely prefer that to considerably longer wait times. I have beat up knees from years of playing soccer and multiple ACL replacements on one of them, and at this point I haven't been great about taking care of myself for a few years, so the walking around to collect passes, then walking around again to use the passes is a little annoying. Otherwise the passes made it possible to know we'd get on some of the good rides and not have to wait for 3 hours. Without the passes I would have been a lot less excited to stay and go to the park much on Sunday. As a fast lane always kind of person at this point in my life, I think the passes are a better idea than waiting in a 3 hour line for sure. And believe me, I get where you're coming from too...Just my two cents.
  15. ^I was at the park this past weekend and I wouldn't necessarily say you're screwed, but temper your expectations and have a plan. We had fast lanes on Saturday and it was definitely busy. We stayed at lighthouse point, and entered through the Magnum entrance, which is the only one open besides the main entrance, and is only available to resort guests. When we went into the park on Sunday we weren't as timely as I would have liked, entered at 11:45 and the park was supposed to open at 11:15 with rides starting at 12. We went at a leisurely pace and went to MF and decided for access passes as I wasn't sure we would be in the first hour rides if we tried for that. It looked like I was right after they opened the lines, so we got that access pass for MF for 1-2, then went to SV and they were still handing out passes for 3-4, then tried TTD and they had 2-3 passes left. So that worked out perfectly. Maverick didn't run all weekend, so that didn't factor into our planning, but I would think if it had been running it would have further thinned the crowd for collecting the passes. This was all done at a really leisurely pace. I would think going from the resort gate to TTD > SV > Mav > MF may be the best order to get passes, or bump ttd to the end depending on what you're trying to get. I did not try and ride in the first hour open line on Sunday so I can't speak to that but it may be able to ride one of those from the resort gate on one of the first few trains, then get passes. Most everything seemed to hold a line to varying extents. Valravn, Raptor, Rougarou, Blue Streak, were all long, gatekeeper should have a short wait. Gemini had both sides going so it may be a good choice as well when other lines start getting long. As for wait times with access passes, we went to MF about 1:45 and took about half an hour, went to TTD around 2:40 and it stopped running twice and took about 1 hour 20 minutes. Got to SV at 4:10, 10 minutes after our passes ended but it was not a problem at all. SV took about half an hour. We did some shopping and eating in the afternoon and didn't try for any afternoon passes, but I'd imagine those may go quickly. I'd say make sure to get to the gate before the opening time to get prime position for whatever you choose to do first and have a plan, and understand you will be able to get on a limited number of rides. And most importantly, have a good time!
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