A.J.

That's good. I remember when Hersheypark was trialing their Fast Track pass they would leave rows of coasters empty even if there weren't any pass users waiting on the platform.

Here we go again! It's the coaster rumor that will never die, made ever more apparent by the fact that the OTHER rumor that would never die turned out to be true. Maybe I'll drive over there and spray some beige dots on the structure myself, stir the pot a bit. Seriously though, isn't the structure basically a lost cause at this point?

Geographically, sure. Demographically? Nah. Cedar Point is a destination resort. Kennywood is a classic amusement park. People make trips specifically for Cedar Point. People don't make trips specifically for Kennywood, they make trips to Pittsburgh, which Kennywood may or may not be a part of. Kennywood is right in the thick of a whole bunch of Pittsburgh suburbs, and within easy driving distance of the entire region. Kennywood doesn't get anywhere as many guests as Cedar Point does but I would not be surprised if their annual passholders visit more times a year than Cedar Point's do. No offense to anyone that lives there, but when was the last time you heard someone say, "I'm going to take a vacation to Sandusky"? Kennywood does not, nor will it ever, need something like Steel Vengeance to continue to sustain itself, no matter how much our kind of people cry out in anguish over the fact that their region doesn't have a Rocky Mountain Construction coaster. Kennywood has a niche, and they play it better than almost everyone else in the United States. I've been to some really crummy "classic" style parks, and each time I went to one, I was reminded of just how good Kennywood and Knoebels really are.

I do not like Matterhorn as a coaster, at all. It's a great themed experience, and wonderfully has a single rider line, but it's rough and janky and jerky. I understand that Matterhorn is THE classic steel coaster, but I much prefer the similar Magic Kingdom Space Mountain.

Honestly, even at 4K that track would be very tough to see sticking out of that tunnel under normal circumstances. Even in one of your "cleaner" frame captures I had to look very hard to finally see it. It doesn't help that the track color blends in either. You can defend your material all you'd like, but there's no denying that this particular stage of the construction is hopelessly boring.

^ Can confirm. Rows 1, 3, and 12 are the best.

Not if you intend on keeping your job, you won't. Please be careful that you are not violating any agreements you may have signed by sharing information, and remember that taking any "insider" photos / video from inside the park without permission isn't allowed on Theme Park Review.

Maybe it's just me, but do you honestly think a park goes straight to B&M or Intamin or whoever, and specifically says, "Hey, we want a new coaster with this specific type of restraint"? I would honestly like to learn if there's an example where that happened. I'm genuinely curious, actually. Anyone know?

Add me to the list of people who are completely okay with the new scene. Rode Pirates of the Caribbean today and it fits right in.

I would say it's definitely B&M's. They design the ride, after all. Also, if this IS a straight clone of Griffon, then that layout would call for the old trains anyway, even though these are 8-across instead of 10-across.

If all cars were created equal, you would have no greater chance of breaking down at 45,XXX miles in a rental car than you would in your own 45,XXX mile car. However, some cars are just plain built better than others. North Carolina to South Carolina is no big deal. Those cars can be easily driven / shipped across either state's border if they need their registration renewed, and agencies typically have several branch locations near the state borders that are in the same "group" for that purpose. I'm not sure how much more I can say without violating my own previous work contract, but when you walk down the rental line in North Carolina and see plates from, say, Ohio, or Louisiana, or Missouri, the reason they got there is because they were one-way rentals from their home state. If you reserve a one-way rental and you're heading somewhere in those directions, you might be placed in one of those cars (though never in a class lower than what you paid for), to get it as close as possible back to its home.

I am a stick but I have strong legs. I rode Skyrush opening day 2012, when they still had the harder padding, and the faster lift, and without the pop-open at the end, and I was not sore afterward. I rode again later in the day. Last time I rode was in 2014. The softer padding helped a little bit, but with the added caveat that I could feel the actual bar through the padding.

Hey, welcome to the TPR forums! I am not seeing duplicate entries for T3 and Pulsar on our end, so there shouldn't be an issue with your ranking. Thanks for taking the time! As this year's poll is still in "beta", things may be a little different next year, but we're sticking with what we have for now.

True, but it would certainly be a little bit awkward trying to design a spiral staircase when none of the supports on the drop, including the elevator, are straight vertical.

We originally limited the selection to the largest traveling coasters at the time - Olympia Looping, Alpina Bahn, Spinning Racer, Hollenblitz, Teststrecke, Spinning Coaster XXL, and Wilde Maus XXL. Considering the Drifting Coaster's popularity and uniqueness, we'll consider adding it to the 2018 poll.

A catwalk appears to run down the length of the drop (probably for evacuation from / maintenance to the elevator), so perhaps the stairs can only be so steep.

One could argue that the Suspended Looping Coaster isn't a "past" model because the standard 687 m layout is still being built new, and that the Firestorm / Space Warp / Bermuda Blitz are the "new school" Arrow multi-loopers.

Happy April Fool's Day.

As long as each of your "types" is ranked appropriately, it won't mess anything up, even if all of the coasters in each "type" are tied.

While we all know how big mergers typically go, the paragraph about "governance structure" seems to indicate that Vekoma will still be...Vekoma, but they'll have someone looking over their shoulder all the time. I'd speculate that Vekoma's client base will either stay the same or potentially expand, but I'd also speculate that we'll see less "experimental" stuff from them moving forward (like that weirdo Pandora's Box thing and the Thrill Lift).

Wait...what? Hang on, let me wipe off my glasses here. Wait, that's actually what's happening? This might actually be really good news for Vekoma in North America. Maybe we'll start seeing a bigger presence from them in the coming years.

C would be the best option. At least with C, you're making the conscious effort to say "I like this group of coasters over this other group". So, that means all those coasters you tied would get a "win" over the bad group. With A, your "meh" coasters might end up ranked lower than they should be, and your "bad" coasters higher, because you left them off. With B, you have that group that you like over your "bad" coasters but the arbitrary ranking in that group might make certain coasters do better or worse in the poll unintentionally. TLDR - if you're going to do "grouped" rankings, give each coaster in a group a tied ranking.

One-way rentals are risky business. Cars from far out of state (or even cars from Canada!) will often sit in rental fleets, especially at airport locations, for a very long time until some sucker ends up one-way-ing them in the general direction of the state they're registered in. A car that's over 2 years old with 30,XXX miles, which may be leaving the fleet soon, might suddenly get one-wayed to a completely different part of the country and rack up miles as if it were new. It's not really "shady" because it's cost-prohibitive for a rental company to re-register / re-title the car in a different state. Example, at the fleet I worked in part-time during college, we would occasionally get cars from Ontario. Due to random circumstances, the stars often wouldn't align to send them back north until they were 3 years old or more, with over 45,000 miles. Sometimes they were the only cars we had left at the end of the night, sometimes they were the only car that we had available in a certain class... Lots of reasons why they get stuck.

From what I understand, under the shell, they're no different from the old ones. But they gave them a new outer shell and a variation on the higher-headrest seats found on Tennessee Tornado (with higher side rails too). Kind of like a "Franken Arrow". Image from the park president's Twitter profile: Apparently some fans have had issues with ear / head-banging, while others seem to have had good rides in one train but not the other (kind of like Magnum XL-200's mysterious "magic seat").

We are not including any Schwarzkopf Jet Star 1s (Tig'rr), Jet Star 2s, or City Jets.