A.J.

Oooh, I'm about to wax philosophical here for a bit. Bear with me here. I will fully admit that I'm a bit biased (actually a lot) because I've devoted the majority of my time as a young professional to looking at how participatory attractions can be incorporated into theme park experiences. A playground is certainly a smaller investment from a financial standpoint, but it can take up just as much physical space as a traditional flat ride, which, as you implied, is a much better "attendance grabber". For that reason, in existing parks, playgrounds seem to work better as an "extra" to a new themed land or area around a big ride, and specifically geared toward the very young age demographic that can't yet experience anything "big". That also has to do with the very nature of most immersive theme parks, where individual "stops", such as coasters, rides, and shows, are connected together with singular pathways. When we as guests want to go to a particular attraction, say, Thunderhead or the Cinnamon Bread place, we become fixated on that goal. We don't tend to notice that "extra" attraction, which could be a play area, photo opportunity, water gag, or something else. It's not enough to distract us from our goal unless we are bringing along a young family member that is curious enough to be looking all over the place all the time, and that would notice it. It's why we have those little play areas in the plazas of major attractions, such as Barnstormer. Once the teenagers of the family get in line, the goal then becomes to try and find a place close where the parents can rest and the little ones can be distracted until the teenagers get off and rejoin the family. The play area serves that purpose. That being said, I'd be completely okay trading interactivity for influence in this case - a spinning coaster would be pretty cool, especially if the SDC-DL relationship continues to hold true. Love discussion!

IT LIVES! I can die happy now. Hopefully Dollywood replaces River Battle with another interactive game / attraction or play area and not just a few flat rides. They got rid of the little playground for Whistle Punk Chaser, and the one in front of Firechaser Express is smaller than that one was.

What are you implying about redheads?

The whole point is that you can make the experience as tame or as wild as you want it to be by controlling the speed under most circumstances. While Sky Dragster's layout is certainly unusual, it's basically a Bobkart with a real track. While it probably makes much more of an environmental impact than Wiegand's offerings, a Spike Coaster can go up and down steep cliffs, or have extended lengths of elevated sections without all the supports, decking, and netting that typically come with a Bobkart. EDIT: I just realized that they have a Bobkart too. Would be interesting to see if people prefer one over the other.

Nothing of the sort that I saw the other night. You could load money onto your Fun-e-Card, get a single day or season pass, but that was about it.

I've taken a trip down to Orlando for...reasons, and I stopped by Fun Spot Kissimmee this evening to check out Mine Blower. The bad news: I spent $18 to take two laps on the coaster and only got to take one because the lap bars in the front half of the train got stuck closed. They had to wait for their mechanic to come over, do all of the tests, let everyone out, and cycle the train empty. By the time they dispatched the train I just wanted to go to my hotel, as I had been on planes for over six hours beforehand. Maybe I'll go take my Fun-e-Card and go ride White Lightning tomorrow. The good news: Mine Blower is pretty good! It's definitely a Gravity Group hybrid, and you can tell - it's somewhat of a rough ride in the turns but the airtime is great! The parts of the ride where there are a bunch of bunny hops in a row are probably the best. Thinking about it I probably like White Lightning better but Mine Blower is pretty solid. If you ever find yourself in the area go give it a ride, you can get on and off in about twenty minutes max.

I realize we have a thread for this sort of thing in the "Random" forum, but this is really relevant for the theme park industry. https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2017/07/legendary-disney-imagineer-marty-sklar-dies-at-83/ Having met Marty in person for the first time at the ImagiNations finals this year, not knowing that this would be his last, this hits me a little hard. He started that program, and I technically wouldn't be where I am had he not done so. May the man, the legend, rest in peace.

Give Dan a sugar free cookie to make a wish that the Title Fairy gives Derek a fast pass to his favorite looping coaster where he'll tip off StationMan on the way to email mrt0ad13@aol.com which will magically kick back to Prince Desmond's queue and the ride will be saved. I was patiently waiting for this.

I would argue that so long as they immediately close the park for the safety of the guests when something like that happens (which, apparently, they did) and take the necessary precautions to ensure that evacuating guests remain safe as they leave, I personally wouldn't see an issue. That being said, they're in an unfortunate position, being right in the middle of that network of creeks and streams. The two big reservoirs are controlled with fairly large dams, but there's also a smaller one where the water just kind of flows over. There's also a small lake connected to the network on the golf course, and a wider run along the parking lot and the road.

That first photo made me think, "Zamperla Iron Shark?!?" Kind of weird perspective on the last rendering, it makes it look like it's just going to kind of meander about after the mid-course brake.

How's the rest of Ontario Place been? Their plans back in 2014-15 were pretty ambitious but I haven't really heard much since then.

Unless they pull a fast one on us and count an uphill water slide (like a ProSlide Rocket or similar) as a coaster.

Well, Bill, it looks like we didn't even have to try this time.

I use the term "uphill water slide" so I don't get confused.

Holy empty wallets, Batman! The season pass with Fast Lane Plus is over five and a half times the cost of a regular season pass! How does that even work?!? By that logic, a chain-wide season / Fast Lane Plus pass would cost just a hair over $1,200...

Finally! I get to be "that guy" again! YEE-ESS! The 3.75G is probably the positives at the bottom of the loop. 180 km/h is 50 m/s, in 1.8 seconds, that's about 2.83 G accelerating. Still bonkers crazy.

Here's the press blast for the first sold Skywarp ride: http://www.skylineattractions.com/?p=press&i=20170706-skyline-attractions-sells-first-skywarp They're listing the stats as the following: Height: 62 feet (19 meters) Footprint: 120 feet X 30 feet (37m X 9m) Track Length: 360 feet (110 m) Instant Capacity: 32 Hourly Capacity: 800 pph Looking forward to it, guys and gals at Skyline.

Trading airtime for hangtime. No wonder they put a drive tire on the top of the loop.

How dare you forget the majesty that is Gadget's Go Coaster. The nerve of you.

I drove all the way out here to California from Georgia. I basically did it in 150-mile stints - every time my trip counter got to 150 miles, I would look for a place to get up and walk around for a few minutes. In a typical day, the first stop would be for gas, the second for food, and the third for gas again.

Looks like we'll need to get the Vekoma boxes out again...

There was never a reason given, to my knowledge, but one could argue that it was either too much rider discomfort or too much stress on the trains. I got to ride it Memorial Day weekend in 2012 and I was definitely uncomfortable. Thigh crush? Nah. But certainly uncomfortable. It's still my favorite steel coaster after all these years though. But I'm sure that yank over the top in the back was probably the most terrifying coaster experience in a lot of guests' lives.

Took a spin (err, drop) on Mission Breakout yesterday. I'm not a drop tower person by any standard, but it was okay! Fun soundtracks, too, I got Hit Me With Your Best Shot. I know that some people have cheekily called California's Tower of Terror "bad tower" but I would give it the label of "fun tower" now because it makes the experience of the drop tower attraction fun, interesting and exciting as opposed to terrifying. It won't get me on StratosFear at Knoebels, mind you, but it's a drop ride I can handle. I can also confirm what others have said - even if you have a FastPass return, expect to wait a while. The sheer popularity of the attraction meant that I was waiting in their FastPass staging area, which was on the other side of the pathway, for about a half hour. Due to the nature of the pathway crossing they would occasionally block it to send a gaggle of people over to the attraction. Better than 90-130+ minute standby (yes, the app pegged it at over 130 minutes once yesterday), but the heat made the experience miserable. Once we got inside the building, though, we got sent right to the pre-show. Rocket Racoon's bantering during the ride ("Is that Disneyland? That's thematically inconsistent") is the second-best part after the soundtrack / ride sequence. Also, I can reconfirm, after seeing it previously in January, that World of Color is best Disneyland show. Gets me every time.

The whole "specific seat" thing would probably have to happen because the ride motion is different depending on whether you're in the front or back of the train. I personally am not familiar with how these work. However, based on my own experiences, I would suspect that it functions in a similar manner to NoLimits in that there are 32 (in the case of Kraken) different "viewing points" for the ride, and each seat assigned to its corresponding viewing point. Though, you could argue that you could reduce it to 8, one per row, for the sake of simplicity. I just think that viewing an animation where you're sort of hung over the edge, but in actuality are being yanked over because you're in the back seat, would probably cause a bit of motion sickness. After all, what causes motion sickness is when what you're seeing doesn't match up with what you're feeling.

I'll take a shot at it for the sake of discussion - Perhaps they want to eliminate any possibility of the VR animation getting out of sync based on changing seats? With the Kraken setup the correct headset is always in the correct seat. If you had 128 headsets (enough for 3 trains' worth plus another full load being set up before boarding), I'd bet that it would be a chore to keep them all in the correct order, especially if the team on the platform needs to keep moving fast and just plug whichever headset in the nearest charger. If a guest decides at the last minute, "I want to do the VR experience now" the operator would probably have to spend more time setting up the experience for their specific seat, and then spend the time adjusting the lenses anyway. Keeping everything restricted to individual seats that never change eliminates that and the operators only have to focus (ba dum tss) their efforts on focusing the headsets so guests can see.