coasterbill

I enjoyed this coaster at Geauga Lake too. I always found it smoother than other SLCs.

The Bizarro crew is horrible. We went to the park in late June and they had a woman on the microphone trying to get people to sing songs and talking about how excited she was that the park was closing soon and she could go home. Everyone in the station was annoyed, the people behind us in line kept yelling "Send the Train" (and they weren't whiny enthusiasts either, just regular people) and most people left the line so they could go ride something else before the park closed. This past Saturday, they were running three trains for some reason but they really only needed two. You were lucky if they had even started checking restraints before every train was in the brakes. I never saw two trains anywhere on the circuit at the same time. This happened early in the day when there was a station wait but later in the day the entire first set of switchbacks was full and this was still going on. This crew sucks!!! Another complaint I have about the ride ops is their blatant disregard for line jumping. Almost every time someone wanted to cut the line because "there friends were up there", they were allowed to. The Sky Screamer crew went way out of their way to let two people cut the entire line to ride with their friends and an employee in the El Toro line asked me (right in front of a group of teenagers that wanted to cut the line) if I should let them do it because "she wasn't allowed to make those decisions". I said yes so I wouldn't have to be uncomfortable standing next to them for the duration of the queue line so I guess part of the blame is on me, but it's not my job to enforce your rules. I never complain about line jumping because it's usually not the parks fault, but it annoyed me that they were not only allowing it right under their noses but going way out of their way to accommodate it. Despite this we did have a good day. Since I'm being negative about the employees I should point out that the Nitro crew was cranking out trains like crazy and the Kingda Ka crew was doing a great job pumping up the crowd and having fun without delaying operations which I thought was pretty cool. We also had one of the best rides I've ever had on Batman. This ride is flying this season, especially late in the day. Luckily the park has awesome coasters which really makes you forget about the bad operations.

I wonder what's wrong with it. We went yesterday and in the morning they had a few cars on the cable but they were going painfully slow (almost like they were using the backup motor). Once they got all the cars off it was down for the rest of the day and we saw people grinding away at something in the drive station (dream street station) and sending sparks everywhere. I think whatever happened may take awhile to fix (just based off of the fact that they were climbing all over the drive shaft). Maybe they can run the side closest to the front gate but it's been down every time we went this year so maybe there's something wrong with that side also.

Well most parks are like that, 2 or 3 world class coasters. 2 or great coasters, and the rest are average. i.e. SF:Great Adventure World Class: El Toro, Nitro Good: Bizarro, Superman Average: Batman, Green Lantern etc. LOL! In what crazy world is one of the more intense B&M invert layouts considered "average???" Have you ever been to Six Flags Great Adventure??? Seriously, were you dropped on your head as a child or something? --Robb "That should go in the dumbest things said on TPR thread." Alvey Agreed 100%. We were at Great Adventure yesterday and had one of the best rides we've ever had on Batman. The ride was flying through the course last night. I guess some people have a problem with this ride because it's a clone but the Batman inverted coasters are great rides.

I have a minor update for everyone. Construction fences have been put up around the entrance to Rattler. It's hard to see exactly what's going on here but I do know that some new concrete has been poured and the chain lift has been removed. The top section of track has been removed and large portions of the pretzel have been taken out. That looks like brand new track lying on the ground and I would guess that the park is going to do a major rehab on the ride rather than remove it. Kilimanjaro's Fury is not so lucky. When it opened it was the tallest coaster in the park, but with additions like Shangaan and Colossus it's lost most of it's appeal. Because of this, high operating costs and capacity issues, the park has decided to close the ride forever. "Final Fury" a charity event will take place on the rides last day after park closing. The event will feature a 2 hour ERT session and seats will be auctioned off for the last train. Since the announcement, lines are the longest they've been in years.

Normally Screamscape is pretty accurate but it sounds like that "breaking news story" was pulled out of thin air just as much as the story about it being removed in the first place. If I'm reading that correctly, he searched high and low for details and didn't find any... which doesn't mean it's not happening. It doesn't mean it is, but it doesn't mean it's not either. Personally I don't believe the ride is going anywhere, but I don't think the lack of details confirms or denies anything.

Thanks for the comments guys. I really appreciate the feedback! I have a small update for you. Gumbo Gary's is a brand new waterfront restaurant in Port Orleans. Despite all of the waterways in the park, there are very few waterfront restaurants and the park seems to be making an effort to correct this problem. With the completion of the waterfront area, Port Orleans is 95% complete. With it's impressive coaster collection, Sunset Valley has become a major destination for thrill seekers. Guests still love the classics though as Sidewinder always has a full queue line. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Rattler. Once the most impressive coaster in the park, the coaster has gotten rough over the years and wait times have decreased significantly. The coaster hasn't needed it's second train all season and now the trains have disappeared from the track and fences have gone up across the entrance and exit paths.

Unfortunately it's really not all that popular. We've visited the park twice this year (both on weekends) and the ride had a station wait both days while rides like Kingda Ka and El Toro had hour waits. I think it's a great coaster and most people seem to like it, but it's location in the park is awful. I'm confident that if they were to put a big headline coaster or thrill ride back there the lines for Bizarro would get very long. I'm not using this to justify these rumors, just making an observation.

Yes, but this doesn't necessarily validate those rumors at all. I think the only reason that Bizarro has low ridership is because of it's awful location. Hopefully if they put some kind of drop tower or Safari Entrance back there they keep Bizarro because it will probably get a huge bump in ridership. Bizarro is a great coaster and it would be a real shame for them to remove it.

Nightmare at Great Escape had the slowest moving line of all time. There may have been 50 people in front of us and we waited over an hour.

I just watched that whole thing and caught the part about Space Spiral being pulled over. I really hope someone gets a video of that.

Thanks! As always I really appreciate the comments. Keep them coming! The last few weeks have been busy ones. My girlfriend and I moved into out first apartment together, I have a full time job and an hour commute now and we've been going to quite a few parks this summer (including East Coast Bash, our first TPR trip) so I haven't had much time for RCT. That being said, this park is still alive and well and I have made quite a bit of progress since the last time you saw it. The park has a brand new section called "Port Orleans". Port Orleans is still under construction but parts of it are open to the public. Welcome to Port Orleans! A brand new section of the park featuring 3 *new* rides (so far) in addition to a new train station, new skyride station and multiple restaurants and games. Here you can see all three new rides. The headliner of the area is "Zephyr", a small-ish stand up coaster. This is designed in the style of the old B&M standups like Vortex at Carowinds or Shockwave at Drayton Manor (hence the barrel roll). The area also features Cajun Chaos which has been relocated and renamed (it used to be at the front of the park) and the brand new "Enchanted Teacups". As you can see, there are some unfinished parts of this section. The exposed food stalls will be placed inside buildings and the pit by Zephyr's loop will be covered as well. Wave Swinger's old pad. Wave Swinger was relocated to Monster's old pad when Monster was moved and renamed Cajun Chaos. I doubt this pad will stay empty for long. Zephyr heading for the first drop. Port Orleans has it's own train station (the ride also stops in Western Adventure and Forbidden Jungle). Right now the path to the train is surrounded by construction fences but they'll be coming down soon. Port Orleans also has the 4th and final Swiss Skyride station which is now fully operational. The new stations combined with the new Swiss Skyride cars have made getting around this huge park a breeze! Nightmare Mine had big lines today as temperatures were in the high 90's.

I was on Facebook this morning and came across this strange post from Lake Compounce. Link I did a news search and read through the comments and couldn't find any more information but this seems very out of the ordinary. Does anyone know more?

We just got back from Six Flags New England and I have to say that even though I'm 6,4 and find Bizarro's restraints a little uncomfortable due to my height (no big deal, I love the ride), these modifications don't make it any worse. I can't imagine a scenario where these would cause a problem for anyone.

I rode I305 for the first time at East Coast Bash and it was awesome but (sorry haters)... my vote is still for Millennium Force. El Toro is a close second though. God I love that ride.

Coasterradio.com just posted a great update from the Gatekeeper announcement and the Disaster Transport demolition. Link

WHORE!!!!!!! Just kidding I've ridden it too. I'm not proud of it but I rode it. My last coaster was Dominator at East Coast Bash.

I get that you're excited and everything but are we really ranking rides we haven't ridden?

This looks like a great addition to Cedar Point. I can't wait to ride it! I can't think of a single reason anyone would complain about this ride. It's aesthetically pleasing, it opens up the view of the beach, it looks like it will be an exciting ride with some cool near-misses and it should liven up a pretty dead midway.

I went to the park for the first time on Sunday after East Coast Bash at KD (which was awesome, thanks TPR!). If this park has improved, I'm glad I didn't go before the improvements. The ride collection is pretty good but we didn't even bother re-riding Superman or Batwing because of the insanely long and hot paths back to them with no shade or bathrooms. Coyote Creek and the Pirate Area are really nice but the rest of the park is hideous. They were also running one train on Apocalypse, Superman and Batwing. This park sucks, and I'll probably only go back to ride Roar since it was closed. The coasters themselves were pretty good though (except for Mind Eraser but that goes without saying). Wild One, Superman, Jokers Jynx and Batwing were all great coasters and for a standup, Apocalypse was tolerable.

That was an awesome ERT session. We rode like 7 or 8 times without getting off. I love the pop of air off of the mcbr.