A.J.

There's a difference between a "bad quality" ride and a prototype. Anyone know how well the other Intamin water coasters are running?

Hey everyone! https://coasterpoll.com/ We're beginning to make preparations for this year's TPR Coaster Poll! It will no longer be in "beta", and we're hoping that we can get even more ballots than we did last year (which in itself was a pretty great sample size). Look for the poll to "officially" open up right at the turn of 2019. We'll close voting after about a month, and we'll have the results almost instantly! With that in mind, however, we'd like to solicit some feedback about the poll! Here's what we're mainly looking for: coasterpoll.com website issues Missing coasters and parks Coasters and parks with misspelled names Coasters and parks with inaccurate / out-of-date names (Ricochet > Apple Zapple) Coasters that closed in 2018 or have been SBNO for an extended period of time We do not intend on adding any more "new for 2018" coasters to this year's poll (such as Hanchang Ocean Park's Steel Dolphin coaster) because coasters that have opened in November or December have not had enough time to be ridden by a lot of people. In addition, this thread will now serve as the ongoing feedback repository for the poll - please use it if you have any questions, feature requests, or anything like that. For those of you who are new to Theme Park Review since we did the Coaster Poll beta, please refer to the first post of this thread for all the info. Remember that you have to create a separate login to add and rank your rides, but we ask that you use the same username as the one you have on the forums. Thanks, and we're looking forward to this year's poll!

Agreed. I think we're just starting to see a lot of old log flumes and shoot-the-chutes reach the ends of their service lives. Most new water rides I've kept track of have either been themed (Infinity Falls, Chiapas), or have been direct replacements for a previous water ride (Everland's Thunder Falls). They just aren't the novelty they once were, which begs the question - besides virtual reality, what exactly IS the late 2010s - early 2020s theme park novelty anyway?

You're correct, this has changed as of very recently. My mistake.

Remember, you're getting yourself MaxPass, so you won't have to go to the distribution location to get a FastPass for Radiator Springs Racers. Personally, I've never had any major issues with Radiator Springs Racers' single rider queue, but it's your call, as you may not want to ride separated. Matterhorn's standby queue is the worst. It wraps around the perimeter of the mountain with little to no shade and nothing to look at except the other people walking around enjoying their days. I might even recommend to go to Matterhorn first to avoid that without having to do single rider. (EDIT: Matterhorn just came out of a refurbishment and this is no longer a thing.) Also, why not the Enchanted Tiki Room? Twenty minutes or so in an air-conditioned building watching a fun show with a Dole Whip... Would be a good break if you have a FastPass coming up. One thing you can do to help yourself plan is download the Disneyland app before your trip and if you're bored on a Friday, just open it up and check what the wait times are.

You'll definitely want to do Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean. All three are very different compared to their Magic Kingdom counterparts. You also have the original Enchanted Tiki Room which is a blast. Other unique quirky "only at Disneyland" attractions are the Submarine Voyage, Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, and the Fantasyland dark rides (Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio's Daring Journey, and the glorious WTF that is Mr. Toad's Wild Ride).

I don't know what you did, but even though Chrome is still telling me that it's "not fully secure", the site is now using HTTPS. Thanks for that.

If Knoebels got a well-loved Top Scan and ran it the way it's supposed to be run, the enthusiast community would lose their minds. And their lunches.

Can also confirm that the site does not appear to be using the "https" protocol by default. EDIT: Like the previous poster said, manually putting https:// into the URL makes everything okay, but when someone types in "themeparkreview.com" without the beginning prefix or "www", it defaults to the non-secure protocol.

What I got from this was: Are the Mack water coaster types (PowerSplash, SuperSplash, water coaster) the next generation of water rides at dry parks? My answer to that would be: not necessarily. Smaller parks, especially international parks, still do log flumes because they're simple. A kid or parent can just hop in the boat and go. The vehicles are easy to maintain because they're effectively just shells with wheels. A water coaster from any manufacturer - Mack, Intamin or someone else - is much more involved. For a start, the boats have locking restraint systems and have to be able to switch from a free-flowing channel to a track and back again (EDIT: technically log flumes do this too but their "track" is a lot simpler). The PowerSplash is less of a water coaster and more of a regular shuttle coaster with a water splash, as the "boats" are always running on the coaster track. EDIT 2: The other argument being made was that Shoot the Rapids closed because of the accident and not because of the maintenance costs.

The reason why we aren't seeing a whole lot of new water attractions at "dry" parks in the United States is because most parks already have their bases covered. Most of the time that's just a log flume and another water ride - either a river rafting ride, or a shoot-the-chute, or a water coaster. Very few parks have the complete set, but I think that's because they feel as though they don't need it.

Big Thunder Mountain at Magic Kingdom today.

One thing with those... I have the catalogues at work at my desk and they actually showcase what the layouts would be for their new coaster types. It's fascinating.

As someone who grew up in Pennsyltucky... This sort of, "oh, everything will be fine" happens more often than you'd think it should.

It's funny, I feel like the ride looks more like a Mack launched coaster than what we would have expected from Intamin even ten years ago.

Yeah, that entire comment thread devolved quickly. My favorites are the ones where people think it should be replaced with Firehawk or a suspended looping coaster.

Oh, yeah, I read the thread. I think it's a pretty great ride (and iconic at night) and I personally would be upset to see it leave permanently, but as someone who used to be deathly afraid of the noises that it made myself, I can understand the concerns of people who have children who can't handle it, autism or not. Thankfully it's a trailer mount, so God forbid if people are vocal enough for it to become a problem, they can relocate it to a different area of the park. But, at this point, I'm not sure it's enough of a problem, considering all the children and families that love it. I definitely agree with you that the removal of the ride shouldn't be some excuse to grandstand or consider it a victory. It's not like the ride is blatantly offensive to anyone or any silly thing like that. In the end, it's just a ride!

That's a good point, the noise from the compressed air system is and has always been a problem, and even though I'm not autistic myself it was really scary / startling being up close to that ride as a kid. I'll be honest, though - if they are really removing it, I think that a Zamperla Air Race would be a great ride in that spot. It has the same 48" height restriction too, and it's quiet.

^ The good news is that the manufacturer still makes the Downdraft, so Knoebels could also be taking it down and refurbishing it (old ride, new parts), or replacing it with an identical model.

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't Knoebels take it down every year and store it so that the cold weather doesn't mess with the compressed air hardware?

Yep, we reported on it as part of our IAAPA expo coverage. It kind of got lost in the woodwork because Intamin made the announcements on a very particular date and time and no one "official" has really spoken much about them since. I'm sure we'll get more in eight months or so when prep for construction actually starts.

That's very thoughtful of you to make the auto-play videos muted by default. Having two audio sources going at the same time (since I often have a music player running while I work) is always confusing.

The theme makes sense in regard to Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, considering Stark bankrolls the Avengers. The Spider-Man ride could have all of the Avengers in it, but the story could be told from Spider-Man's / Peter Parker's perspective. It's kind of like those Justice League dark rides - it's pretty obvious who the main characters are but the story is told from Cyborg's perspective and you help him throughout the ride.

Yep, that explains it. I keep forgetting that my tank of a desktop is in the minority now!

They absoultely are. Disney has stated many times they don't want to be associated with gambling. This has come up many times with their cruise ships and why you don't see casinos on any of Disney Cruise Lines. This is my understanding as well. They were huge donors in support of Florida's recently-passed Amendment 3, which effectively limits the expansion of gambling in the state.