coasterbill

With all due respect I guess I just don't get it with Cyclone. I never rode it when it was new and with the old first drop but in it's current state I thought it was dull on it's best days and rough on it's worst days. We only rode it because it never had a line... it just didn't do anything except for crawl around the course and occasionally jar the hell out of everyone on the train. They played up the fact that the coaster was a classic but it really wasn't all that old... especially when compared to the much better wood coaster just a few hundred feet away from it. I won't miss this ride at all. If I was going to complain about things SFNE removed this would be at the bottom of the list. Ride removals like Colossus, the Log Flume, Time Warp, Shipwreck Falls, Rodeo and Spider and possibly the New England Skyway annoy me much more. Especially because most of them weren't replaced with anything new and the only one that was (the Log Flume) was replaced with one of the ugliest and dumbest water rides ever constructed. Colossus was kind of replaced but with an ugly upcharge carnival ride and a relocated swing ride from somewhere else in the park. Cyclone is going to be replaced with something awesome and if you want to ride a great classic wood coaster there's one over by Scream.

I really like this so far. I'm confused about your plans for the chairlift though, what do you mean when you say it will span the entire park? Are you going to do a square formation? As it stands I would back the station closest to the main midway up so it's symmetrical with the front gate (so back it up even with the white queue building for the water ride). I'd also make it a little bit higher (maybe 25-30 feet or so). Nice choice with the Von Roll cars and not the standard crap that comes with the game. I'd also suggest removing that expansion pack carousel. I'm not sure if you're familiar with parkdat but if you take the expansion objects out more people will be able to view the park. I actually like that carousel (it was literally the only good thing that came out of either expansion pack) but you'll get very few views if you leave it in. Great job so far... sorry to be so critical but it's because I think this park has a lot of potential.

Great update so far, I really need to check out some of these Jersey Shore parks (specially the Wildwood piers).

I found those very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

No they can't; you know they can't... I don't expect the ride to be delivered by opening day. I expect something like what happened with the new bumper cars.

Is the capacity really any worse than any of the other flats in the park? Parachutes, Tango and even Sky Screamer don't have great capacities and I don't see anybody complaining about them. It looks like Sky Screamer can handle 32 people at a time and this can hold 24 but probably won't have as high of a demand and can't possibly have a longer loading time than Sky Screamer.

I really don't get this negativity. In all honesty this park doesn't need anything new. They finally added a decent amount of Family rides with Adventure Alley, they added Safari which has mass appeal and is a great attraction that's really popular... they have one of the best coaster collections in the country and they have some thrilling flats with Sky Screamer and Twister. They even have a few unique ones like Houdini and the Parachutes. This park really doesn't need anything except for general improvements and to improve operations on their existing rides like opening both sides of the Skyway since it's now routinely posting 30-45 minute waits and to open the damn log flume all day and preferably all season as it's immensely popular and has mass appeal. That's really about it. If they would have done nothing I would have been fine with it after adding the tallest drop tower in the world the year before. People think the park needs to replace things that they've removed but if they were never there you would never feel like the park is lacking. The park doesn't need a family coaster to replace Rolling Thunder because they have Runaway Mine Train, Skull Mountain and Dark Knight for that demographic. They don't need to replace Old Country with anything because 99 out of 100 people never go back there. It's not like it's creating an empty area of the park... they just kind of cut it off from the park. Nobody walks past Batman and Dark Knight. Besides what I mentioned above, all I'd really like to see is for them to do some small general things. Figure out what you need to do to allow Kingda Ka and Zumanjaro to run together, fix Nitro's bad train, Open the path in Golden Kingdom and that would make me extremely happy. They don't need a new ride, the fact that they're even getting anything is a bonus for me.

I feel like once this coaster is built people will be happy with it. I'm sure they'll make it look nice and after the first few seasons capacity may not be as much of an issue. I guess we'll have to wait and see though.

This is the best week to go to Hershey. We did it a few years ago and walked right on to every single ride on a beautiful day.

Why does it matter if they call it a coaster? We all know it's not... it's not like anyone's going to count it as a credit. It's just more dumb marketing by a dumb company. I still think these will be fun rides though, what they call it doesn't really matter.

We were in Scranton yesterday morning having lunch with family and decided to swing by Dorney for the afternoon / evening afterwards since we have a platinum pass. Except for one short trip earlier this year (we were on our way back from Ohio and stopped for a few rides on the way home) this was our first trip this year. I'll eat my words a little bit, the park was really crowded (For Dorney) but part of that may be because it was setting up to be a hot day and it ended up being a little cloudy, probably driving some people out of the water park to the dry park. After visiting so many Six Flags parks it's easy to forget how much better of a company Cedar Fair actually is. People lump Six Flags and Cedar Fair together but it's really night and day. Every ride was dispatching quickly, employees were friendly and it looks like every ride was just painted yesterday. It's also nice to see a park actually operate it's rides from open to close with no stupid, reactionary cost-cutting measures. I kind of get the feeling that Cedar Fair realizes there are ups and downs in the industry and they just keep going on as planned while doing whatever they can to make sure guests have a great day want to come back. Six Flags on the other hand is freaking out and coming up with ridiculous cost cutting measures while hoping guests don't notice. We were at the park for like 5 hours and all the major coasters had short waits of about 10-20 minutes. We got on Talon (front), Hydra, Thunder Creek Mountain, Demon Drop, Steel Force (front), Posessed (in the front because it had a shorter wait than the middle cars for some reason) and hit Talon again on the way out, again in the front and at this point a walk-on. I've always been a huge fan of Talon, Demon Drop and Thunder Creek Mountain but was surprised at how much we enjoyed all of our other rides. Hydra was running well, I like Posessed more and more each time I ride it and Steel Force is a great front seat ride. I wish we had more time to go to Chickie and Pete's and ride some other rides (we usually always get a ride on the SeaDragon, Enterprise, Meteor, Revolution and on Thunderhawk) but overall we had a great afternoon and evening. Oh... and Stinger's train seems to be in the station with a tarp over it but I'm assuming nobody cares. I know I don't. lol

I'm fine with this addition... the park got a big new addition last year and I'll definitely ride it. The Batman backwards thing seems pretty stupid but I'm assuming it won't be for the whole season (right?). So given that this is quite literally a carnival ride that's based off of a ride that can be set up in a day I'm predicting they won't be able to get it open until mid to late June. What do you guys think? Place your bets.

We rode Kumba earlier this year and it couldn't have been smoother. I'm still blown away by how amazing that ride is... It's a top 5 for me (out of about 230). If you love inversions then Kumba is your dream coaster... especially in the magic seat. That zero g roll on Kumba is my favorite inversion on any coaster. I've heard many people complain about the cobra roll on that ride. This is a first. I agree that Alpengeist's cobra roll is a great element. It's amazingly snappy. The only Cobra roll I like better is Kumba's.

Zumanjaro is a great ride, but it's not worth what it did to Kingda Ka. Now if the park is busy you can only ride Kingda Ka first thing in the morning, at the end of the night because once Zumanjaro closes the ride can operate normally again or if Zumanjaro is broken down and has the flaps down (if it's broken with the flaps up Kingda Ka can't operate and has to wait for Zumanjaro to be fixed. This may not matter if the ride area is empty but if Zumanjaro breaks during normal operation Kingda Ka can't run. Personally I'd rather they keep it closed until they can get the rides to operate together. The way it stands now I don't even want to think about how long Kingda Ka's line will be during Fright Fest. It may approach Gringots opening day territory.

Part of me actually hopes it's down for the rest of the year. I enjoy the ride but if I know Zumanjaro is closed I'll definitely head to the park for the rare opportunity to ride Kingda Ka with a reasonable wait.

Hopefully they're planning to burn this park to the ground for the insurance money. I'd be in favor of that.

Yeah okay. I don't see us getting anything big next year and as long as they make some general improvements I'm fine with that.

Great report. I actually kind of like Firehawk. I think Vortex is much, much worse. That thing is absolutely horrible.

Isn't it a little early to be making that huge leap? I mean... Nemesis, Kumba, Montu. This ride might be better (lol) but we should probably ride it before saying it looks like the best B&M ever. Like I said before I think it's going to be great. I don't expect a super intense ride because that's not what it's designed to be. It's designed for speed and has some low to the ground elements that should really showcase that speed. I can't wait to ride it.

Nobody should be surprised by Dorney being empty and all the coasters being walk ons. It's always like that and has been pretty much every day for the last 15+ years. If you want to find the crowds, head over to Wildwater Kingdom.

... well that explains the 5 minute wait for Kingda Ka.

Well done.

Sorry for the double post, but it looks like the other side of Skyhawk (the one that had the incident) is running again. It's being shown on the live cam but is too far away to tell if it's testing or is open with riders.

All four U.S Giga's are in a days drive form me. psssssst... Canada isn't in America. We only have 3 gigas. Edit: ^Beat me to it. lol

As far as I know no date has been announced.