coasterbill

Good points. I can't think of any; someone else may be able to besides the Topple Towers. I've never seen a ride going from being a staple in every single park to completely gone from everywhere like the Chance Chaos. As far as I know there are only two still operating in America. That's the one that immediately comes to mind.

Um...what?

It won't be busy, ride Nighthawk first and everything else will have short waits all day so it doesn't matter. Have fun!!!

It's still there, but it wasn't operating today. This is the only photo I took of it. It's pretty well hidden behind the trees. [attachment=0]ImageUploadedByTapatalk1455350181.276284.jpg[/attachment] It's not operating in that shot? Did they park it like that to access one of the wheels I guess? it looks like it's mid-swing.

Nothing at that park should be operating...

Yeah but the Camelback lodge hotel is a ridiculous ripoff. It looks really nice but god damn...

Hit up the Camelback mountain coaster. That thing is surprisingly fun. They have snow tubing / skiing too so it's a cool place to bring a date / kids. It's a pretty good cure for the offseason blues in the NY area. lol

I'm in the minority that still really likes Firehawk. Vortex I IMO was running like crap last year I couldn't agree more. I actually really like Firehawk and it's one of the only coasters that makes me say, "Oh $hit!" Vortex, on the other hand, flat out sucks. It's the roughest coaster in Ohio. I'd take a ride on Mean Streak any day before Vortex. I'm in the minority of Mean Streak likers too lol

I was wondering the same thing the other day just for fun and realized they wouldn't open the park because they wouldn't expect to make any money but if they had reason to believe people would show up then they would probably send a train up the lift. I give it about a 50% chance of coming back but if it did then I'm sure they'd open it.

Ahem... less about Shoot the Rapids, more about Sky Ride. Sky Ride is a Von Roll type 101 and it's the oldest Von Roll type 101 currently operating in America. The others are at the Minnesota State Fair, Tulsa State Fairgrounds, SeaWorld San Diego, Six Flags Over Georgia, San Diego Zoo, Busch Gardens Tampa, California's Great America, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Six Flags Great Adventure (this is the only American double chairlift but despite this, Cedar Point beats it's ridership numbers handily each year thanks to their incredible efficiency). Basically any good Skyway with a detachable Gondola in the U.S. is a Von Roll Type 101. The ones that require you to load while they're moving are usually Hopkins rides (I believe) or actual lifts from Ski Resorts (Knoebels). The best piece I've found online about Sky Ride operation and how they work is from Great Adventure history and it's worth a read. Cedar Point's ride operates exactly the same way. I've never been a Sky Ride operator (unfortunately) but from what I gather because I'm a huge dork they usually run with either 20, 26 or 38 cabins. They have 40 but one is used as a Halloweekends prop and with 38 cabin operation one is always kept as a spare. They generally run with 38 in the height of summer when they have the most staff, they're not able to do that in the first few weekends of the season or after Labor Day. At peak operation each side has 4 ops, one at catch who's responsible for stopping the cabins as they come in, one at unload who swings the door open and unloads riders, then pushes it to the person at load who loads riders and locks the door and then trip, the person who pushes the cabins to the point where they'll be automatically dispatched onto the cable. At Six Flags park an op generally has to pull a rope but Cedar Point has a mechanism that does this automatically (it holds the car to space them out if it's before the dispatch time and if it's after it it just lets it go right out onto the cable but they're really efficient so this is rare). Sky Ride ops are so efficient that usually when viewing the ride from the Gatekeeper midway you'll see every single car passing eachother at the same time which means they're always hitting their target dispatch with every single cabin. I believe at peak operation the cabins need to be sent out between 9 and 10 seconds. Sky Ride is a timeless attraction. It does more riders each season than every non-coaster ride in the park besides the train and it generally does more riders than many of the coasters including Wicked Twister, Top Thrill Dragster, Iron Dragon and Maverick. It also seems to be the most physically demanding to work so you'll get a good workout. Okay, so now that I've lost all of my cool points and exposed my Sky Ride nerdiness, congrats on your new job and have a great summer (you'll be seeing us a ton lol).

Again sir, this is one of the many reasons why you're one of the few people on this site who I wouldn't mind sitting down and having a beer with.

Are you a narc?

They didn't really say anything about Wildcat. It doesn't seem too abrnomal to me.

Tony Clark is the best.

Yeah it's Cedar Fair and B&M. It'll absolutely be open on time, no doubt in my mind.

Vekoma flyers are great rides.

My level of jealousy is through the roof, if I could pick any ride anywhere to work that would be it (I know this sounds sarcastic but I swear I'm being serious). Congrats! You'll be seeing us a lot this summer. Lol

See and I think Riddler is sh*t. But when I was a kid I loved it. They're incredibly dependent on physical dimensions.

I've never seen a new ride steal an old ride's thunder like that. When we went to Canada's Wonderland we loved both Behemoth and Leviathan, at other parks new great rides never made me think less of existing rides. Even a ride like El Toro doesn't make me love Nitro any less even though it's obviously better. Skyrush never stole Storm Runner's Thunder (Farenheit never had any thunder lol), same goes for Millennium Force and Magnum... it's really amazing how Fury just made Intimidator look like a big steaming pile of who gives a f**k.

Bro to be fair what's the Sandusky Register actually supposed to report on in the winter? This is understandably big news for them.

Have you been using the aforementioned Black Forest?

Blue Streak is a perfectly good classic wood coaster. I'm not saying they couldn't benefit from a new generation wood coaster but that's really being overly critical of Blue Streak. I know this was intended as a joke, but Dorney Park already has a log flume far superior to STR. The Thunder Creek Mountain revolution is growing.

... sounds like one hell of an exciting offseason.

If you need to put an Arrow Looper train on a coaster to make it smoother then that really speaks volumes about the horrific trains it must have been running before.

Stand ups seem to be more about body type / height than any type of coaster. I have no doubt that for some people they're enjoyable. When I was a kid I loved stand ups but now with the lone exception of the Carowinds Vortex (which I'll keep arguing is a good ride) I hate them all.