A.J.

You forgot to add #4 - just don't ride it and your body will thank you later.

Still well within the threshold of what I'll pay to play at Knoebels any day. It certainly won't stop me from spending my Memorial Day weekend there this year!

Energylandia has released a new drone footage video showing just how packed the park is now:

From what I understand, this IS a new policy. They're currently offering it on Avatar Flight of Passage. A guest can ask the cast member at the "pulse" point in the caves area for the pass (which is a lanyard with a plastic card), then the guest goes out to use the restroom and waits at the merge point for their party (EDIT: after re-entering through the FastPass Plus entrance). If you've ridden Avatar Flight of Passage lately you'll notice a gaggle of people that hang out near the exit doors before the link chambers. I'm pretty sure those are people who have returned with their passes. Time will tell if people start taking advantage of it (in a bad way), but someone will probably figure it out sooner or later.

Robb already posted a front-seat on-ride video, but how about one from the back car? A Japanese YouTube user posted this video a few days ago.

To be fair, Disneyland's attendance was effectively stagnant during that period as well. Still a lot higher than Disney California Adventure, because duh, but both parks had gains for 2015, declines for 2016, and gains for 2017. But even then, 2016 was a decline year for every Disney park except Shanghai Disneyland, and the top 25 parks worldwide as a collective unit, by just over 1 percent. Disney California Adventure will never be at the level of Disneyland in terms of first-park-visited-during-the-day attendance but it doesn't need to be. While there are certainly some remnants of the "cheap and cheerful" old days still around (Hollywood Land comes to mind), the park still looks great and will likely still continue to be successful.

Yes.

What, then, is the criteria for success?

Having the days left until Untamed opens on the wait times screen is wonderfully cheeky. Can't wait!

The original Intamin prefabricated wooden coaster lives! Colossos is testing!

They appear to be expanding so fast that you'll pretty much always miss out on something awesome no matter when you decide to go!

Correct. Their previous from-scratch installations have been either Topper Track wooden coasters or Raptor Track clones.

Also keep in mind that admission was free until March 31st, the day of the Turkish local elections.

Fortnite may be ultra-popular now but it's going to eventually simmer down and have a smaller, but consistent player base like Minecraft or Grand Theft Auto 5. The Battle Royale video game genre is itself a fad that will not last. I don't even think that Fortnite would be anywhere near as popular as it is now had it not been sold as a free-to-start game and / or piggybacked off of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The reason why franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, et al remain popular is that they go beyond their original mediums. You don't see people writing "extended universe" novels about Fortnite. Fortnite doesn't have ten (mostly pretty great) films and several animated series. People love Fortnite for sure, but I'm not sure we'll ever see people "connect" with Fortnite like they do with the I.P.s previously mentioned.

Changes are already happening. Disneyland's Project Stardust has been an ongoing effort to widen pathways and eliminate pinch points, and apparently it's been working.

Hey everyone! It's that time of year again, and instead of clogging up the discussion threads with theme parks' various April Fools shenanigans, I thought it would be a good idea to just have them all in their own thread! For example, here's Farup Sommerland's: https://www.facebook.com/faarupsommerland/photos/a.10150104621895376/10156598337785376/?type=3&theater Basically, they've decided that for Aalborg's annual Tall Ships Race this year, they're going to relocate Orkanen for a few days so it will go underneath the Limfjord (historical fjord / channel in Denmark that runs through Aalborg) instead of the park's lake.

Ahem.

It takes a lot of skill to pilot a drone the way it's shown at the end of that video. Pretty freaking great.

That's correct, none of the El Loco coasters have seatbelts that go between the legs.

If you don't buy it, than how exactly would a lap bar keep your body in an upright seated position, on its own, during, say, Montu's batwing element? Even with a shoulder harness I can really feel the strain on my neck.

Fahrenheit is still a good place to start only because the queue doesn't move much faster than it did ten years ago.

It's not just about preventing people from "flying out" - in many cases, it's about keeping the riders' bodies in place and upright. If you were to ride Intimidator 305 without the vests, what condition would your back and neck be in when the ride was over? Or Olympia Looping, or the Edmonton Mindbender, with insanely-fast transitions to forces of over 5 Gs, without the shoulder bars? Or a ride where you hang over the edge, but without that vest or shoulder harness that your body can safely fall into? I would argue that B&M coasters' heavy positive G forces are exactly what necessitates the use of their vest harnesses, for the above reason. And for the coasters that don't necessarily need them, why should B&M waste all of their resources developing a brand-new seat, restraint, and related mechanics when what they already have will do the job just fine? Also, for B&M's existing coasters, like Kumba, Montu, and SheiKra, a conversion to a more modern, possibly free-bodied lap restraint is virtually impossible due to the need for more space per seat (since the bars stick out on either side, as opposed to being strictly forward then down, like a traditional shoulder harness). I'm not saying you're wrong here, but a lap restraint on its own, overhead or otherwise, isn't always the correct solution. Rocky Mountain obviously knows how to design a coaster that is comfortable (or easy) enough in the positive-G sections to not have to worry about riders' bodies curling forward.

Look for the results sometime at the beginning of next month.

Nah. That's Morey's Runaway Tram.

My goodness, Untamed just keeps looking better and better, doesn't it?