coasterbill

Then get a skip-the-line pass. Look, generally speaking you're not going to wait an hour for every ride. Take Cedar Point for example. If you go without a Fastlane and some rides have hour waits, it's not like it's going to be hour wait after hour wait all day long. You learn what rides you can mix in if you don't feel like standing in line and that breaks things up. For example, we usually go for 3 days on Labor Day weekend. One day we may get Fastlane. On the other days we take it slow, ride a bunch during early entry with short lines, hang out in the back until it gets busy and then when the lines get that long you mix in a few 5-15 minute waits to break things up (Gemeni, Power Tower, Magnum, Skyhawk, Mean Streak, Iron Dragon, Windseeker... stuff like that). Then a few hours later you go to the front of the park and enjoy short waits for Raptor and Gatekeeper. (Seriously... Gemeni, Skyhawk and Power Tower are your best friends. Best... Friends....) Plus the only rides in that park where the queue really bothers me are Dragster and Gatekeeper. Dragster because it's a cattle pen and Gatekeeper because they only put shade canopies in the part of the queue that are never ever full and otherwise you have to stand in the sun. Even at parks like Great Adventure you break things up with rides like Bizarro, Skull Mountain and Batman. You don't just stand in long lines all day unless you're a glutton for punishment. It's not like I enjoy lines but if you go to a park and can't have a good time because the lines are long then there's something wrong with you.

^

Well that's the good news... the bad news is we also need to hit Steel Pier.

Mean Streak was never neglected, but there's only so much they can do. By all accounts they did a ridiculous amount of maintenance on that thing, pretty much around the clock.

Since Wildwood weekend is abso-f**king-lutely happening again next year we're so hitting this on the way home.

You should call them up and let them know. They probably haven't thought of this. Call them up and tell the receptionist that you're a coaster enthusiast and that it's important. I'm sure they'll put you right through. If only the professionals who built and inspected the ride had the Travel Channel they would have realized this glaring mistake and the designer's lack of credentials. I bet they feel like a bunch of silly gooses now. I for one, fell out of seat from the shock. That was indeed shocking. Excellent detective work, Watson, please inform the authorities. Once again, tell the receptionist that you're a member of Theme Park Review and while you're aware of their investigation, a bunch of 14-year-olds who've never been to the park on the internet are performing a parallel investigation and they've narrowed it down to the airplane and parachute seatbelts. Feel free to drop in your post count, coaster count and that you have experience building water slides in Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 if they're still skeptical. They'll put you right through to the investigation team and will probably want to set up a conference call. Don't actually call anyone. People are so stupid I feel like I actually need to clarify this.

The 37 barrel rolls, drop track, fire effects and hydraulic launch section in the shed.

I'm sure they know what they're doing.

Listen man, that intern from Coastal Carolina's tourism program had to spend like 30 minutes reading animoto FAQs to get the video to this level. And before someone comments on how we're complaining about the video, we're not complaining. We're just complimenting them on that lovely Kaleidoscope filter. My only complaint is that they didn't put in like 800 more of them. So good. The real complaining will begin when the announcement is some crap like new (horrendous) bumper cars in Hang Time's old spot (given their recent hints) while the park down the street has the greatest bumper cars in the entire world. I feel like they sent someone to Knoebels and said "Wow, people sure love these flyers and bumper cars. We need some of those." It's a solid plan only modern flyers and modern bumper cars absolutely suck and they forgot to factor in that little detail.

It's kind of funny how many people (even in this thread) just flat out forget about Flying Turns being a wood coaster. It's not mind-blowing but it's a lot of fun and really helps make the collection even better and more well rounded.

I adore this park. The coaster selection is amazing, but we also love animals which helps a lot. If I weren't such a big fan of them I might have a different opinion of the park. Because some people are fun and don't think it's the end of the world standing in a line and talking with the people in your group and taking in the park atmosphere. Sure I'd rather there were no lines but a day at a park with long lines is better than a day at work (unless you're at La Ronde). Plus if they bother you that much or it's not your home park just get a skip the line pass...

The Mean Streak trick works on Wildcat. Otherwise it's brutal. Walking up to it it I always question how it can be so small but still so brutal. Front row lean forward.

That video is really good. I love the effects and cool font choice. You can tell they really spent a lot of time on that. Great work team.

I used to enjoy Challenge Golf but it's time has come and gone and it's ridiculous lack of maintenance is really showing. It's gone from a fun course to a complete train wreck.

I was about to ask the same thing. My "enthusiast bull***" detector" is going off.

To be fair, how many people have been killed on theme park rides this year? Sure there have been some accidents but very few fatalities. It's actually been sort of a lucky year in that regard. An entire coaster train derailed and crashed into a kiddy ride at M&D's and nobody was killed. It sounds like in this incident the child will likely be fine. Aside from the Verruckt accident what really happened? Someone drowned in a swimming pool at Knoebels which is terrible but doesn't really count. I'm sure there have been others but I can't think of any.

Can we all just take a minute to appreciate the Universal Orlando twitter page? Full Disclosure: I have no clue who "Thrill Geek" is.

I just want to throw this out there now. If they sue the park because of a lightning strike I'm leaving the country and never coming back. Also, Lakemont is nearby. Please tell me the nearby lightning strike hit Lakemont. Please... It's okay to joke about that because nobody goes to Lakemont and therefore nobody would be injured...

You're 13. Do you even drink coffee? Shut up. Please stop ruining my beloved thread with your reckless negativity. All negativity should be directed at La Ronde for being the most atrocious theme park ever. (I guess I should specify that I'm saying "shut up" in a joking tone since some people need everything spelled out for them. This entire post is sarcasm and should not be taken literally. This post cannot be disseminated without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball. All rights reserved.)

Timmies is good. I wouldn't call it a highlight, though. Get out of my thread. Their French Vanilla (or as they call it in Quebec... "Regular Vanilla" is heavenly.

^ Yes. They really suck that much. Clearly the ride crew knew about it since it was staffed but it seems like the front gate / security crew never got the memo. Honestly when we drove up to the park we almost figured it would happen. This seems shocking but really it was entirely predictable. Oh please. I am pretty sure you have had this shirt on every time we have hung out, including last weekend. And I have the pics to prove it! Well yeah but when hanging out with the president of the Skull Mountain cult that's a necessity.

Thanks everyone! Okay... brace yourselves for part 2. As the sun rose on Quebec, La Ronde remained in shadow. A cold, dreary rain fell, almost as a solemn reminder of the dark and depressed nature of the mysterious island where the sun never shines, birds never sing and trains never dispatch. The island has a bridge passing over it that connects to Montreal. Some drivers never notice the shadowy land beneath them as they sip their Tim Horton’s and think “aboat” the next habs game or their upcoming trip to Canada’s Wonderland. Other drivers though feel a sense of unease as they pass over it… some even subconsciously add a few extra kilometers per hour until the mysterious island is safely in their rear view mirror. For some reason, the island felt even more lonely and solemn on this morning. Sure it was clearly advertised that Goliath had 2 hours of exclusive ride time for passholders, but as we approached the rear parking lot we felt alone, abandoned and overrun with the kind of hopelessness one can only experience on the mysterious island of “La Ronde”. The air was full of eerie silence, the kind of silenced reserved for an eerie horror film or for when… I don’t know, a park advertises ERT but they don’t even know they advertised ERT until you f**king tell them and then they go get their f**king manager to show them the f**king email you had to f*cking pull up on your f**cking phone or the posting they put on their own f**king website that clearly says ERT but they forgot to tell the staff so nobody knew it was even a thing… We needed all the coffee in the world to put up with another day at La Ronde. Thankfully we were in Canada and drinking Tim Horton’s is like drinking liquid sunshine and happiness. Oh crap, I broke away from the storyline. Sorry, I guess I needed to vent. Anyway yeah they had no idea they were supposed to have ERT. We were the only ones at the gate and security looked entirely confused as to why we were there until we showed them what it said on their website and in the email they sent out on our phones. I swear to god I’m not making this up. Waiting for the ERT session that may or may not be coming. Eventually someone went to get their supervisor so they could “find out if they were going to do the ERT since we were the only ones there” (are you f**king kidding me? They really said that.). About 20 minutes later they came out and told us we could go in, but we went over to the ride and were told that we couldn’t ride because it was raining and VR wouldn’t work in the rain. Silence… lol We explained that we didn’t have any interest whatsoever in the VR and after looking confused as to why anyone would ever want to ride a coaster without a cell phone strapped to their face, they allowed us to ride. To be honest the ERT session was actually a lot of fun. The ride was enjoyable (nothing amazing but all B&M hypers are fun rides) and we got a bunch of rides in, mostly as the only 2 people on the train. Eventually it stopped raining and we decided to try the VR. The first time it didn’t work at all and I was left staring at the back of my virtual seat. The second time it worked and it was sort of cool, but personally I thought it was kind of an overrated gimmick and the phone was pretty annoying bouncing up and down on every hill. Most of our rides were ridden without the VR, the way the coaster was intended to be ridden. It’s a solid ride for sure and Goliath would be a welcome addition to any park. A picture of Goliath taken later in the day. Notice the stacking. Lol As ERT came to a close, more and more people started to show up. As 12:00 rolled around we went over to the rope drop area so we could head to the other rides. We had a simple plan, to ride the Wild Mouse (because of it’s horrible capacity) and then Vampire to get all of the coasters in. Besides that the only other rides we were interested in were the Sky Tower, Monorail and La Pitoune. As soon as the rope dropped we headed right for the mouse. It had a cool bobsled theme but was a really forgettable ride. Capacity was terrible so a stair wait took about 20 minutes but by the time we got out of line it was posted at 2 hours so I can’t complain. Our next stop was Vampire which took us through an obnoxiously long, overgrown, ugly queue line into a generic looking station. It was running backwards which was a shame but we got our ride in. Unlike Batman at Great Adventure the ride really beat the hell out of us running backwards, but I’m sure when it runs forwards it’s just fine so I won’t hold that against it. I’m not sure why it was so much rougher than the Great Adventure version but we assumed that it was because the ride was at La Ronde and in order to be compliant with park policy it had to be slightly sh*ttier than it’s counterparts. I’m pretty sure that just like Quebec has language police, La Ronde has a private force of suck police in order to keep the tradition alive. I’m sure they had to go through a bunch of hoops to have a Batman clone at all. That might be why the ride has one less row than the other Batman clones (so it had a 6 car train with the backwards train) just to keep with the tradition of miserable capacity that La Ronde holds near and dear to it’s heart. This picture was taken specifically to make Boldikus jealous. For some reason he loves Batman backwards. The jealousy factor was raised exponentially by the "I Conquered Skull Mountain" shirt (which I rarely ever wear in public) . He was texting me pictures from Great Adventure on opening day at work and therefore deserves this. Plus let's be real... nobody was actually jealous of anyone who was at La Ronde. The only appropriate emotion would be empathy. After we left Vampire we figured that since the park had been open for an hour we’d be able to go ride the other rides we wanted to ride and then head into the city (Spoiler Alert: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Just kidding, basically every ride was still closed. No really, besides Goliath, Vampire the Mouse and the Super Horsemanship ride, nothing was running. Nothing. The park was open for an hour and most rides weren’t even staffed yet. We didn’t want to leave without riding the Flume, so we decided to just meander around and check out the shops / take some pictures. The go kart track was lovely. Had it been abandoned for a decade? Was it going to open in an hour? Sometimes at La Ronde it's hard to tell. That's half the fun! For when the park drives you to drink… As we kept walking it became obvious that basically nothing was open which now included Goliath because it was drizzling. Apparently this is par for the course at La Ronde that only 3 rides are open for the first 2 hours of the day so people just jump the chains and get in lines for rides that aren’t staffed and haven’t moved once all day. The flyers had a long queue building up, but there was no ride op in sight and the ride wouldn’t move for another 40 minutes. Notice the brand new ride behind it which had a full queue and was also closed with no ride op in sight 90 minutes after park opening on a weekend. I like this picture because it’s framed nicely by the closed observation tower on the left and the closed wood coaster on the right. I’m artsy… Here you’ll see another artsy photograph I took that I like to call “A compilation of closed sh*t”. This piece really speaks to how if we search deep within ourselves we’ll find a lot of our own closed sh*t that we need to deal with, but in turn that really just makes us stronger people in the end. The people on the left walking away sad because the park has been open for 90 minutes and everything is closed are really just a symbol of how sometimes things can seem dreary and bleak but we need to experience that so that we can learn to search within ourselves and turn our internal closed sh*t into open sh*t and then when we finally experience the open sh*t it will seem even better because of the struggles we’ve had to overcome. … it’s a metaphor. After more mindless meandering we were shocked to see the Sky Tower actually running. We hopped on and got on the first cabin of the day, which offered some impressive views of the park and the surrounding area. The bridge sort of gets in the way of the skyline, but you still get great views of the area and of Olympic stadium. The bridge and the invert with the closed standup, closed log flume, closed S&S tower, closed Go Karts, closed Breakdance, closed slingshot, abandoned concrete whatever-that-is and closed Star Flyer. This ride was actually open at that point but with dispatch times like that it’s really hard to tell. Once we got back down to the ground most of the rides had finally opened (all 2 hours after the park opened so it was obviously scheduled that way). We made our way over to the flume and were greeted with a 30 minute line that had formed before the ride opened. That was just fine with me because this was the most anticipated ride of the trip and it didn’t disappoint. La Pituone opened with the park in 1967 which makes it one of the older Flumes still in operation. It shows it’s age, but in a good way with old wood structures, leaky troughs and a really cool classic vibe. I think the key to this ride’s longevity is it’s location. It’s located over the lake and it’s filled with lake water. Because of this Six Flags doesn’t seem too concerned with the incredible amount of leaks because if the water leaks into the lake they just pump it right back out, probably keeping the maintenance costs low for a flume that’s pushing 50 years old. The ride really bangs around the troughs a lot and does very little floating which I generally don’t enjoy that much but because of the classic nature of this ride I didn’t care one bit. This is a great little ride and helped give us a slightly (and I mean slightly) more favorable opinion of the park as a whole. La Ronde does not deserve this ride. After La Pituone we were ready to head into the city, but we opted to take the unique looking monorail to the other end of the park. The ride was really cool, unfortunately it really needed a coat of paint but I did appreciate it for it’s old school appearance. The rusty monorail My overall opinion of La Ronde is that no matter how much I try to sugar coat it the park flat out sucks. Strangely enough though I’ll probably be back. Why? Because Montreal is incredible! We can’t get back to that amazing city fast enough, and despite the crapiness of the park I’m sure we’ll stop in for a ride on Goliath and La Pituone at some point. As far as the rest of the park though it’s really a dive, and it’s kind of sad because it does feel like it was once a very impressive park. I’m going to split this report into 3 parts because I don’t want the crapiness of La Ronde to put a damper on the rest of our Montreal report (can I just say one more time how much I love Montreal? Because I LOVE Montreal.) Also for all you coaster people, there’s a cameo from Great Escape on the way. Bye piece of crap wood coaster and crappy horsemanship ride! Hopefully next time we’re here we’ll find out that the horsemanship ride was melted down to make steel for the IBox track that it’s piece of crap neighbor so desperately needs. As for La Ronde, bye Felicia! Or as the locals would say… “Au Revoir Felicia”. Coming up next… Montreal and Great Escape! PS: And if you participated in the last trivia question and guessed “Actual Midway”, you’re right! Let that sink in for a minute.

You're hurting my soul with this WHAT IF alternate timeline. Every single time we went over those trims a little bit of me died inside. I just want to point out again because it's my job that if they were willing to remove the trims and re-track Thunderhawk a little every year people would talk about this ride in the same way they talk about Phoenix. In the front car without the trim (especially in 1:2) Thunderhawk launches riders out of their seats on the top of the first turnaround like they have a rockets up their a**es. The return run is capable of awesome airtime too but it's trimmed to death.

You're not missing anything. Canobie Lake is a lovely little park and Yankee Cannonball is a perfectly average ride with a nice classic feel but Canobie fans are absolutely delusional and living in a fantasy world with the way they talk about Yankee Cannonball. Glad to hear you had a typical experience at Six Flags New England, the 5th friendliest park in the world. We see things like this on almost every visit. I never bother asking for anything (even nicely) because I know better at this point but I always see people who are perfectly polite get yelled at for asking questions, even on Batman where the sign says there's a front seat line and there's a bright yellow line all the way down the stairs showing everyone where the line is. If you dare talk about the huge bright line or giant sign about the front seat line get ready to face the f**king fury.

As long as I get to keep Thunder Creek Mountain then I'm totally on board.