coasterbill

That looks great, all of the information coming out today is really exciting.

Every day that involves a Marcel trip report is a good day. You could post a trip report from the DMV and somehow make it fun. ... That's not to say these aren't great pictures though because they are, I'd never heard of Garie Beach but it's now on my bucket list.

The Beast for me... the best night ride in the world (I say that with great authority like I've ridden all the coasters in the world at night or something).

Absolutely. Cedar Point's policy is excellent. They wait about 10 minutes on just about every major ride, even rides like Iron Dragon get a grace period.

I wish the park would go back to the old system of listing their Fright Fest hours and then extending closing time to midnight when they're busy rather than saying they close at Midnight and then closing all the rides early.

lol, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Oh and Thunderbolt is back on the website so everyone can relax now (referring to the conversation about 2 pages back). Maybe the park heard that it was a fun family attraction and hit the delete button in a panic but when they realized it was a roller coaster and not a flat they decided it was okay to keep the ride. ... or maybe they're just working on the website. I think either explanation is plausible.

The old style seats (like the ones on Fury) are less susceptible to the B&M rattle than the V formation seats. The B&M rattle isn't a big deal anyway but if I had to pick a preferred type I'd go with these for that reason. And B&M seems to have stopped using pre-drops across the board. I'm not sure why that is.

I liked Chickie and Pete's at Cedar Point but for some reason I found the food (especially the crab fries) to be much better at Dorney. Then again we usually drop a good hundred bucks at the one at Dorney and the majority of that is on drinks so maybe my judgement is a little off when I go there. Drunk Jojo rolls are the best Jojo rolls.

From the park's Twitter. You can see them loading the cars into the transfer area on the webcam also.

I love Fast Pass. As enthusiasts we all know the best times to go to parks are when everyone is in school / at work but the problem is that with limited vacation time this isn't always possible. Fast Pass makes it possible to go to parks when you previously wouldn't have. For example... 2 years ago we wanted to go to Kings Dominion (we try to go every year since we have a Platinum Pass and it's only 6 hours away) but I305 was closed almost all year and didn't open until Haunt. Because of the long drive we were forced to visit on a Haunt Saturday but we did so and had a great time despite hour plus waits for everything and a 3 hour wait for Volcano thanks to our Fast Passes. We also like to go to parks on long weekends because we can travel long distances without taking time off and Fast Pass makes that possible also. Last year we went to Kings Island on memorial day weekend and despite lines for Banshee, the Beast, Flight of Fear, FIrehawk and Diamondback we didn't have any issues at all re-riding those rides as much as we wanted thanks to Fast Pass. I don't usually use them at local parks (unless it's October) but I love having the option when we travel.

Cedar Point needs to do something about it's food offerings. Besides the franchises it's brought in (Chickie and Pete's, Famous Daves, TGI Fridays, Chick Fil A, Pinks and Boardwalk Fries) the food is all amazingly bad. I know Midway Market has it's fans but that's just crappy picnic grove food and I don't know what anyone sees in the place. I love this park but the food selection needs serious help.

Thanks! I personally felt like it got what it deserved but hopefully Sunset Vista delivers that gold. I plan on submitting that park this week so you should see it released within about a month and when it is I'll be sure to post it here as well. And given the size of Sunset Valley I would extend my deepest sympathies for anyone who had to make a map for it. lol If you compare it to other Spotlight or Gold parks, its not even close in quality, it got the rating it deserved (honestly a little high in my opinion). Sunset Vista looks to be a solid Silver or a low Gold however, Bill has improved tremendously while building this park, and its becoming one of my favorites. Thanks for the compliment, and I totally agree with your assessment of Sunset Valley. I didn't feel like it deserved anything more than bronze but I'm very appreciative of the accolade and for everyone taking the time to vote on it.

As I said on NE, the supports of the lift are great but the surrounding areas are a little under-developed. If you spend as much time on everything else as you did on those lift supports you'd have yourself a home run because those are great. Also... I'm not sure how I feel about your use of hedge mazes. Those might look a lot better as scenery objects. By the way, after looking at this on street view I'll give you some credit for your placement of objects. It's right on the money and it's hard to translate real life into RCT2 so great work there. This has the potential to be really nice when it's done.

For me it depends on the park: Six Fags Great Adventure - significantly worse than last year. Operations were decent in most cases and I didn't find them to be any worse than last year except for obviously on Kingda Ka. The two huge issues I encountered were the parks closing ride lines way before the park closed with no indication of what time the lines would be closing (I'm not talking about Safari... that's a different situation) and of course Kingda Ka's capacity being cut in half. I was also confused as to why they put some of their best employees on Kingda Ka as they busted it to load the trains so they could go sit on the launch track. Put those operators on Bizarro so maybe they could dispatch a train eventually. Unfortunately the Zumanjaro crew was so good that when we were there Kingda Ka only launched 1 train per every Zumanjaro cycle. We had come up with a solution (ride Kingda Ka at night so when Zumanjaro finishes cycling through the line Kingda Ka can operate normally) but now you can't do that because they close ride lines early. Other than that the park was no better or worse than last year but making one of your best coasters essentially un-rideable due to horrible wait times and the fact that a front seat ride is almost a requirement to make the ride good which makes the wait even worse and closing ride lines early our experience at this park was much worse than in previous years. Six Fags New England - slightly worse than last year. Operations and non coaster offerings were awful but that's no different than in previous years. The only thing this year that made the experience a little worse was that they took our favorite coaster in the park (Goliath) and made it one of the worst coasters I've ever ridden with a new train that we didn't need. New England Sky Screamer was fun but because of long waits and bad operations we rarely get to ride it. Six Fags America - better than last year We love the new Mardi Gras section. I'm not a huge fan of this park but it's slowly but surely improving. The new bar is great, the new coaster and flyers are fun and they took what used to be a sub-par area of the park and really enhanced it. Employees seemed to be friendlier than normal as well.

I really enjoyed this report (I had a chance to check it out over the weekend but for whatever reason never responded). Great pictures!

Great pictures, thanks for sharing!

I hate to say that this park needs to be put out of it's misery but at this point I really can't help but feel that way, especially after visiting last year and seeing the awful state of the place. Throw in the fact that there's a great family park that's clean, fun and quickly expanding just 45 minutes away and I see no hope for this place.

I agree 100%. Then again it's February and everyone's bored. This usually leads to enthusiasts losing their minds and starting ridiculous discussions. It's an annual tradition.

It is interesting that the park is "going green" by adding the panels but cutting down a ton of trees to do it. I know the main idea here is to save money not to save the environment but usually when companies do this they like to make a big deal about how "green" they are and pat themselves on the back. That doesn't really work if you level a large part of the forest to do it when you have a massive parking lot and a huge area around the old Wild Safari entrance that's already clear that you could have used. It doesn't matter to me. I'm no environmentalist. I'm just saying it's a bid odd...

The rumor is that the park was looking into this but dropped the idea as the initial plan was to use GPS technology to allow the ride to shoot lasers and fire at the flat rides at pre-determined times throughout the season... destroying a few every year until the park had nothing but coasters. Sadly the park realized this was impractical and decided to go back to doing that manually every offseason.

Nobody is debating, we're saying that the coasters compliment each other very well. That's the opposite of a debate.

Because enthusiasts like to complain. Everyone should have know that the coaster would be a smooth and fun but forceless ride based on the manufacturer and the coaster type. That's exactly what we got and I really enjoy it. If I want intensity I'll go to the back of the park and ride Maverick or across the midway and ride Raptor. If I want an awesome first drop and a sensation of flying with some great near-hits thrown in then I'll go ride Gatekeeper.

I agree but both rides have great tricks, and I love Kingda Ka (in the front seat). I like Zumanjaro too but unless they manage to get the rides to run together I'm still not a fan of it. It's not worth what it did to Kingda Ka's capacity.

Like I said... a few months ago we went to Dollywood when it was in the high 30's. Firechaser Express and Mystery Mine both had well over an hour wait while running at full capacity. People will absolutely go to the parks when it's cold (Smoky Mountain Christmas and any Halloween event anywhere prove this) but you need a good festival / themed event and Christmas is the perfect theme for November and December. Of course... I did say it "seems like" and I'm sure the number is lower in the city of Charlotte itself but that's a very, very religious area of the country. The percentage of people celebrating Christmas in some form is high anywhere in the U.S. but in the Southeastern U.S. that number only grows so I would think the market for this would be great. That was my point.

I get what you mean. I looked up the temperature averages for Charlottle, and the average temperatures for November are mostly in the 60s, which is not bad park weather at all. That's why I wish more parks would extend their operating season beyond Halloween (where the climate allows it, of course). Then again, besides coasters enthusiasts, most people don't want to ride a coaster when the temperature is below 60. Like I said... a few months ago we went to Dollywood when it was in the high 30's. Firechaser Express and Mystery Mine both had well over an hour wait while running at full capacity. People will absolutely go to the parks when it's cold (Smoky Mountain Christmas and any Halloween event anywhere prove this) but you need a good festival / themed event and Christmas is the perfect theme for November and December.