coasterbill

I'm really starting to hope they never touch this ride. RMC's are fun but not as much fun as watching enthusiasts whine constantly about a coaster that's far from great... but not nearly as bad as anyone makes it out to be. Whenever it pops up in those "worst coaster ever" threads it's hard to keep from laughing.

The people that didn't get to ride it are the lucky ones.

I haven't heard... I assume it's supposed to be open but that doesn't mean it will be. Last year it broke down in pretty spectacular fashion just a few hours into the first day of the season and hasn't even tested since so if it does open with the park I'd hurry up and ride it before it breaks down again.

Most likely installing the LIMs, Fire effects and show building.

I have a membership because I hate processing passes at Six Flags. To their credit they've really simplified the process but I love the membership and highly recommend it.

The New Englad Skyway was a joke. It was the shortest Von Roll ever and with the way Six Flags operated it it was a complete waste of time. The Skyway at Great Adventure is huge, is immensely popular, has a sponsorship deal with M&M's that most likely covers te cost of maintaining the ride and from a historical perspective the ride is a treasure. It operated at the World's Fair in New York, I believe it's the only operating double Von roll on earth and at such a huge park it's not only a great ride but it's practical as well. Could Six Flags remove it? Sure... they're Six Flags... But it would be an awful, awful shame.

I think you missed the joke...

You're right according to basically every other park as they all have minimum temps around the 40 degree mark but Great Adventure doesn't care about weather. That's what makes me so excited for the potential of a holiday in the park event... I could actually see them running some of their major coasters and even if they do have a temperature cutoff it would probably be really low. I could sort of see them closing off Plaza De Carnival and Golden Kingdom and then leaving the rest of the park open. This is all a pipe dream but if they did a Holiday in the Park event that would probably be the most likely scanario since I doubt they'd want to run El Toro since it has the potential to valley and there's no reason to open Golden Kingdom since it's less you have to decorate and so easy to close off.

You can rush Knoebels but don't... Knoebels is a full day park and there's far more to this place than coasters. Plus from what you're saying about the preferences of the group you're with this is probably going to be the best park on the entire trip. The flats are usually either standard flats that run much better cycles than they do in other parks or totally unique flats that you can't find anywhere else and it sounds like everyone will be able to enjoy those together. They also have a lot of random, awesome things scattered around the park (a really good miniature golf course, fascination, 2 great free museums...) and the food is amazing. Dorney can be a full day park since you're going to the waterpark but it doesn't really have to be. If you go to Dorney after Knoebels you'll hate Dorney. On the way to SFNE you'll probably be on I-84 which means you'll pass right by Quassy and Lake Compounce by the way. Just throwing that out there... EDIT: And despite my responses to every trip planning thread lately, I don't work for Knoebels.

I feel exactly the same way about Twister. It's been perfectly walking the fine line between out of control and rough without ever getting too rough. Knoebel's maintenance team does an awesome job on this ride and because of that it's absolutely fantastic. Luckily Knoebels is way too awesome to ever iron horse anything because they'd rather spend whatever money and time is necessary to make sure their wood coasters are always running great. Iron horsing is great for corporate parks but it's not really something that would fit in at Knoebels.

Mean Streak is the clear winner for me.

You're not alone... I love those things. We always ride them multiple times when we visit a park that has one.

As a follow up... I should have mentioned this but to help make your already easy decision (Knoebels) even easier, Hershey has a skip-the line pass so you'll have no problem fitting everything into one day without being rushed even if you spend the previous day at Knoebels. It's called Fast Track and there are 2 options... one of them is $50 and last year it allowed you to skip the line on 9 coasters (one use each after a scheduled time) or for $25 you can get an evening pass that's good for 5 select coasters with the same setup. Much like Dollywood's skip the line program, it's such a great deal (the evening one) it's almost crazy not to do it. This guarantees you'll be able to ride a lot of rides at Hershey in one day so there's no need to waste any time there the day before when you could be at the much better park in Elysburg Don't get me wrong... the preview that Hershey offers on one day tickets is really cool. But it's not Knoebels cool... and as much fun as visiting all of those great corporate parks for the 12 days leading up to it will be, by then you'll want a park that's totally unique and effectively the anti-corporate park in every possible way (amazing food, cheap food, no admission fee, no parking fee, amazingly fast and friendly operators, no need for a skip-the line program, flats that run fast and long cycles, great classic dark rides, classic rides you've never seen anywhere else, the best bumper cars and flyers anywhere, a flying turns and 2 world class wood coasters... plus a brand new steel looping coaster coming this year).

Thunderhawk at Dorney has the potential to be the best ride in the park by far in my opinion. It's hard to imagine now but this ride can easily be great. The top of the first and second turnarounds create insane ejector air in the front car and the bunny hops would have nice floater without the trim. Unfortunately the ride is trimmed to death and has now become a rough piece of crap. It's sad but we almost never ride it anymore.

I know this is the "Ask Alvey" area but if it's alright here's my opinion... So everything sounds good but here's the huge problem... Day 13 doesn't involve Knoebels. That's terrible... you need more Knoebels in your life. Taking I-80 to the Danville area to get to Knoebels adds about 40 minutes to your travel time to Hershey but it's worth it. I'm assuming you were planning on taking advantage of that deal at Hershey where you get a preview the day before with a single day ticket but just forget about that and go to Knoebels because it's a way better park anyway. Knoebels is only 5 1/2 hours from Cedar Point so if you get there early in the afternoon you can a lot of time there (which is good, because it's one of the best parks in America). Just get a wristband if it's available that day and ride / eat everything in the park. Hershey is only a little over an hour from Knoebels so you can stay until they close. You're welcome. Your trip is now infinitely better.

Thanks! I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. All of your help is much appreciated because as I said I don't know much of anything about Disney. I really do wish we had more time there and I know it's really strange to spend a full day at Sea World and not Magic Kingdom but when it's Valentines Day weekend and your girlfriend's #1 priority when visiting Orlando is to see Shamu then you make absolutely sure you go see Shamu. lol

Phoenix is flat out ridiculous. When the ride runs 2 trains they always end up standing around forever before sending the train just so it won't block stop on the lift since it's usually checked and ready while the train on the circuit is just cresting or still on it's way up the lift. With one train it's amazing to watch. As you suggested the combination of a ton of ops, no seat belts, buzz bars, no gates and great ops makes for loading times that rarely exceed 30 seconds.

^ I was wondering the same thing. I was looking forward to hopefully riding it this spring.

Obviously they're the professionals but if you're building a new ride wouldn't you... I don't know? Tell people about it that way it actually brings people into your park. Carowinds has already had at least 2 media events for their ride, they're filming a TV show and they're doing whatever they can to make sure everyone knows that they have a huge new coaster and everyone should come visit the park, spend money, buy season passes and ride the ride. They promoted it like crazy before the holidays to get people to buy Season Passes as gifts, they're promoting it now since construction is well underway... BGW is doing absolutely nothing. I don't get the logic in building a huge new coaster and not telling people you have it. If nobody knows it's there, how will it increase revenue at the rate they probably hope to increase it given their current situation. They're the experts but this is really confusing.

Must be the work of the joker...

The foliage seems a bit too heavy. Allow guests to see the rides and don't hide them with really heavy trees all the time. I like the woodie a lot though, I can't wait to see more.

As many have said enthusiasts are great for the parks on social media, as customers and with word-of-mouth marketing. The problem is that enthusiasts aren't AS great for the parks as they seem to think they are as many (not all) enthusiasts have an unbelievable sense of entitlement or feel that they can run the parks better than the people actually running them because they've played rollercoaster tycoon and beat a few scenarios. Enthusiasts who feel like the park owes them anything are unbearable and they give everyone a bad name. I would think that the answer to this question is different depending on what park we're talking about it. Cedar Point comes to mind as a park that does a really good job of messing with the enthusiasts and interacting with them while at the same time brushing off their stupid feedback in an amusing way that's fun for everyone. Take this twitter exchange... Tony Clark saw an idiotic red drawing made in paint of the "proposed new layout" for the coaster replacing Mantis and held a contest... And then he made fun of all the drawings that came in. (If you're interested go to his twitter and scroll back to about September 1st, it's really funny) Despite mocking them which is not only fun for us but probably necessary to keep them from going insane they do go above and beyond to please enthusiasts which is impossible) with things like the campout, winter chill out and even little things like bringing back the still webcams after the unbelievable amount of whining about it. I'm just using them as one example but many parks (like Holiday World for example) also interact with and mess with enthusiasts in a really fun way. Unfortunately parks that take 99.9% of enthusiast feedback as anything other than totally ridiculous and waste their time trying to make these people happy will probably end up hating enthusiasts because usually the more vocal members of the community are idiots and have that sense of entitlement I mentioned before. I'm sure dealing with a community that can be this annoying (at times) can be tough, and I applaud the parks that do it well. If I worked for a park I probably wouldn't be able to stand the community as a whole (though of course it's never fair to lump everyone together and i do feel that this community is better than most). If you try to have fun with it it probably makes the relationship much more tolerable. I just wish enthusiasts would stop acting as if the parks owe them anything or like they know how to run the parks better than the professionals who work there do. If this ever happened this thread wouldn't even exist because everyone would know that there was a great relationship between the parks and the community.

If you don't have a Platinum Pass then I highly suggest staying on-site. Early entry is awesome... you get in at 9am and the lines are all 15 minutes or less. They'll usually have Gatekeeper, Raptor, Millennium Force, Maverick and Iron Dragon open (and some flats) but basically as the hour goes on more and more rides start opening so the list of rides usually ends up being larger and I expect Rougarou to be added as well. Don't waste your time with Dragster though... this never seems to open early. Even with Fastlane, take advantage of early entry (and if you enter from the resort gate don't be worried about the enormous line for early entry... they chew through that line in 5 minutes tops). There are a lot of tips like "start at the back first and don't ride Raptor or Gatekeeper in the morning" that I'd normally give you but with Fastlane plus you can do whatever you damn well please. I guess my only general park tips are 1) Sit in the front of Dragster even though the line is long. Unlike Kingda Ka this ride is good everywhere but the front is the best by a wide margin. 2) Sit in the front of Raptor because it will only add like 1 or 2 trains to your wait and it's awesome. 3) Front seat left wing on Gatekeeper is the best. If you ride this ride and find it "rough" then ride it again in the front and you won't have a problem. 4) The train and the Sky Ride are your friends because this park is huge and by the end of day 2 you'll be pretty exhausted. Sky Ride chews through the line in no time because they run a million cars so don't worry about the line being all the way down the ramp.

I have a question about El Toro. I always see you guys run and check the restraints really quickly and then hear the person at the panel rattle off numbers (which I'm assuming are car numbers) that need to be re-checked. Does the panel tell you which bar is causing the problem or do you just pretty much need to check every single one (assuming it's not obvious) to see if it "verifies". If that's the case (and it seems to be) I wonder why Intamin wouldn't program it to show you specific seat numbers to make your jobs easier and load times faster. I know rides like Mystery Mine have lights on the back of every seat that do this which seems better than just giving you a car number.

You'll be fine going to Cedar Point on Memorial Day weekend. We go on Labor Day weekend every year and don't even get Fastlane (though we go for 3 days). If you go for 2 days and get Fastlane Plus then you're golden. Do you have a Platinum Pass? If so make sure you take advantage of early entry at 9AM. If you don't have this then I'd suggest staying on-site. You can get a good hotel in Sandusky - Milan for basically nothing so we never stay at the Cedar Point hotels. I'm sure it would be awesome but if you stay back by I-80 you're 15 minutes from the park in a decent hotel for $50 or $60 bucks (in most places I would never go to a hotel room that's 50 or 60 bucks but in that part of Ohio hotel rates are really low for some reason). It's also a safe bet that all you'll want to do is go to the hotel and crash so I wouldn't bother on a hotel room with a lake view that you'll never get to look at because you'll be running around the park. That's just me though... that's all about your personal preference. I've never been to Kennywood so I can't be any help there but it seems like you're all set to have a great time at Cedar Point. Enjoy!