coasterbill

I don't know why this made me laugh as much as it did.

At least it drowns out the polka music...

Honestly I know I complain about things at Great Adventure (building great themed areas and then closing half of them or adding things with no regards to those themes, no lights at all in the park, empty pads, everything in Camp Aventura...) but the staff is not one of them. Great Adventure has a great staff that's dedicated to making guests happy (especially on the bigger rides). The Bizarro insight is really interesting but ops on that ride have been pretty slow in years past, frequently not even checking the first row until all 3 trains were in the brakes. They've improved this year though. Overall operations at the park are very good... they're better at Cedar Point because the rides all have more staff but the staff at Great Adventure does the best they can. Also, unlike most Six Flags parks Great Adventure runs every ride at maximum capacity (I'm not counting KA because it runs most efficiently with 3 trains) and I really appreciate that. This year they're almost always running both sides of the Skyride which is something I never thought I'd see. Seriously... this is beyond shocking. In addition to being fast, Great Adventure generally has very friendly staff too, especially on the big rides like Nitro and El Toro. They do the little things that many parks don't do that add so much to guest satisfaction like talking to the guests waiting in the station or letting guests re-ride coasters at the end of the night when nobody is waiting for their row (I hate when parks don't do this because there's no reason not to but very few parks do it). Like I said, this park has a lot of problems, and cutting staffing to save money is one of them but the operators do the best they can with the resources they have and it's much appreciated. Now if only the other Six Flags parks could do the same thing...

I was just looking at that too. Wicked Twister isn't even running and it usually runs in the rain. So does Gatekeeper if it's not windy (which it's not). I love that Windseeker and Skyride are running though, that just proves that this little rain storm is a complete non event since they close for everything weather related.

It's nice to see some RCT2 work around here to break up all of the RCT3 stuff. I really like this, especially the suspended. Is that a custom mouse or the Six Flags one that's included with the game?

How big of a line does Mantis normally get? It seems like it's still a really popular ride, people love standup coasters for some reason.

Great pictures from Cedar Point... too bad you didn't get to ride Raptor once it got warmed up and had full trains. Also I agree with you about the Maxair line. That and the Gatekeeper line really need more shade. Gatekeeper has canopies in the parts of the line that only fill up in the morning but in the part of the line that's almost always full there's no shade at all.

I read that article and I think it's important to point out that the following is misleading at best and complete bull**** at worst. Back in 2005, the park operated in a completely different way than it does now. Back then the park had at least 4 entrances and admission was free. Everyone that wanted to ride the rides had a fun card which they could keep as long as they wanted and re-charge at a kiosk. Now the park is gated and admission is required. All rides are free once you get in the park (a standard pay-one-price park). This means a few different things, first of all... the guests they've lost probably didn't spend much money. They didn't ride rides, a lot of these guests were kids that spent little money and caused trouble which is probably the main reason they made the price pay-one-price... to eliminate people using the park as a free babysitter in an attempt to bring a more affluent crowd and eliminate some of the rowdy teens. Sure some other people were turned off by this policy (grandparents for example that wanted to watch their kids on the rides) but how much money were they really spending? This stat is very misleading. Also... and this is even more important. It can't be stressed enough that they have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how many people visited the park in 2005. They had at least 4 separate gates with no security points or turnstiles... any attendance figure they have is purely an estimate based on an average of what they think each guest spent or how many people are in each car that paid to park in the lot (which probably isn't how this was calculated since a lot of people are dropped off or take public transportation). They're making this number up... it's a load of crap. They have no way of knowing their attendance before 2009. Also, the way they phrased this is very misleading and I think it was done deliberately to sensationalize the story. Saying that "Attendance has dropped from 1 million in 2005 to 390,000 last year." implies that this is a trend... in reality almost all of that loss was from 2008-2009 when they changed over to a pay-one price park and presumably actually started keeping track of attendance. They knew attendance would drop and spending per guest would go up... which is exactly what happened. Playland has a lot of problems but these people are manipulating the numbers to make it look much worse than it really is. The fact that they have an operator for the Ice Casino is encouraging because they thing is responsible for a huge percentage of their losses. I'm glad they saw through Sustainable Playland's plan... hopefully they go with someone like Zamperla who has a history of turning parks around while preserving historical rides and attractions.

A lot of Cedar Fair parks have Chick Fil A which I love... their world views are reprehensible but their chicken is outstanding.

Yes, Dragster has been open since Monday.

Cedar Fair didn't even own the park when they built the Bat, Son of Beast or King Cobra and B&M had already done a splashdown with Griffon and Sheikra so it was the first splashdown in the chain but it wasn't anything that required a "test park".

The only ones I could really see are Ghostrider and/or Mean Streak. Thunderhawk is over 90 years old. It could be a very good coaster if they re-tracked it but iron horsing a wood coaster that's almost 100 years old would be a ridiculously stupid decision and honestly a real shame. I'd change that to "no chance". It may be too small for them to do much with it anyway.

Wow... so young. May he rest in peace.

Those videos look great. We'll absolutely be heading back to Orlando next year specifically for this... usually we go on vacation to a new place each year but since Harry Potter 1 was so awesome we're not going to miss out on Harry Potter 2. I should just give Universal my credit card, debit card and pin number to save everyone time.

I really enjoyed this... awful movie though.

Great pictures, they really went all out for lunch... I figured you guys would just end up with the standard Midway Market food (which would have been fine) but they went above and beyond by the looks of things.

Great pictures!

I don't really think there's a general consensus but a lot of people do consider it the best park in the country. If you're into heavy theming then Disney and Universal are going to be way ahead of it, if you're into animals then Busch and SeaWorld parks will be way ahead of it, if you're into shows Disney and Dollywood will be ahead of it... it's all about what you like. Even some coaster people think other parks in the country have a better coaster collection (I disagree). Personally I think Cedar Point is amazing because of it's breathtaking natural location, awesome rides and fun resort atmosphere. It's a very nice park too, very clean and well kept (though the theming isn't great besides Frontier Trail and even that isn't anywhere close to a Dollywood / Disney / Universal level. For me, it's probably my #2 park overall. If I look at it logically it's probably #1 but there's no need to look at amusement parks logically. Since amusement parks are in the business of fun I consider Knoebels to be my favorite park as every single time we go we just have a ridiculous amount of fun because everything there is just so completely awesome. Then again there won't be many people that list Knoebels as their #1 which goes back to my earlier point. Everyone has a different opinion on the subject which is part of which makes this hobby so much fun.

I actually think Raptor is my favorite B&M invert. If it's too rough try it again in the front but I don't think it's rough, just snappy which is much better than the forceless crap they build now (with a few exceptions).

I did some digging and those are absolutely SeaDragon heads. I can't find pictures of there old SeaDragon but I found some good pictures of some other ones (look at the decorative blue pieces and the teeth). It's a shame they got rid of their SeaDragon ride but at least they found a good use for the heads.

Is that the head from the old SeaDragon ride?

I agree that the ride seems a bit gimmicky and I'm not nearly as excited as I would be if it were a continuous circuit Intamin 500 foot coaster or something but I still think it's going to be great and I'll definitely ride it next time I'm in Orlando. I don't care if a ride is gimmicky if it's fun, and nothing is more gimmicky than Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka and I enjoy those.

Yeah I said it "might have" my favorite because I'm on the fence about it too thanks to Millennium Force and a few others (Tennessee Tornado's tunneled first drop, Apollo's Chariot's first drop (a lot of airtime in the back) and Goliath's first drop at SFNE... I'm sure I'm forgetting some). El Toro is absolutely the best though, I've never experienced that kind of ejector airtime all the way down a drop before.

Gatekeeper is an awesome ride, I really don't know why people dislike it so much. It's not forceful but it's very comfortable now and the first drop and following element plus both keyholes are just incredibly fun. Gatekeeper might actually have my favorite first drop on any coaster not named El Toro.

It's the live video cams but they always move them so they're not pointed on Dragster at the moment... right now they're on the front gate and Millennium Force.