A.J.

I'm curious to see if the theme park experiences will make the film series popular again.

This makes me very happy as it hints that whatever comes after Hyperspace Mountain will be back to the Verne style. I personally would love to see something similar to the first theme / musical score.

I suspect that maximum height requirements are 6 feet, 5 inches because, for all these European ride manufacturers, 2 meters (78.7") is a nice, round number to create their designs around.

You have good taste. The FF / GTC4 would probably be the Ferrari model line I'd buy if I had the money.

I don't know, I think I kind of like the "exposed arteries" look, but it definitely breaks with the immersion that they were going for. Perhaps there's an interesting light show that will happen inside at night.

So it's a retail / dining / entertainment complex now, not just the coaster, cool. That certainly makes me more optimistic than before, but we'll see how long the novelty lasts.

Sheesh, I feel bad for poor Jukebox. It looks kind of shoehorned in, out of place between Valkyria and Loke.

Take some time to develop your park (several weeks at least), and then start a new thread. Locked!

I'll be moving to California soon for work... While I'm certainly excited about my job out there, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I won't be able to go back to either Fun Spot park for a while. Seven months until the IAAPA Attractions Expo...

Then you're missing out. I would place the Fun Spot parks between amusement parks and F.E.C.s for sure, but the Orlando one is worth at least an evening visit for White Lightning and a few classic flat rides.

Yikes, it does the high-speed bit twice? I thought that only happened in kids' cartoons. EDIT: Is Playland's new spin-and-spew the same sort of ride as that one? Tropical Storm, right?

Considering that the attraction apparently starts off as a taping of the Tonight Show, I feel like the physical queue kind of makes sense the way it is. You have the lobby where you're waiting to get in the day of your taping, the second section where you have the pre-show entertainment and then the ride vehicle / theater where the show happens. I've never been to a late-night taping myself, so I'm just making assumptions here, but I think that it's at least logical, even though the pre-show stuff happens in the theater itself in real life. Making that experience up-charge would fly in the face of traditional story / experience conventions, and I feel like I would have been glad that they did it the way they did, had I had already ridden it (which again, I haven't). Right now at least, I personally do think that a virtual queuing system is good / appropriate under the right circumstances and with the right implementation, but I'm not sure I'm ready to call it an end-all solution - yet! It's tricky. I don't think that everyone is just mentally trained to physically wait in line, especially now that everything else in our lives is becoming more and more instantaneous. At the same time, I do not like the possibility of spending all my money on a big theme park vacation only to be turned down from riding the newest attraction. But that's me as an individual guest, with his own likes / dislikes that may not be the same as others, talking.

I'm not sure I'm ready to put the blame on the queuing system itself just yet, especially considering that the attraction only had its grand opening the other day. I'm assuming that the lounge areas each all have a maximum occupancy, and the virtual queuing means that those numbers will never get higher than they're supposed to. I realize that, yes, why have the lounge areas when you can have switchbacks in a themed space, but every review I've read has said that the lounge areas are much nicer than a traditional queue. As for the people that aren't allowed to wait? That's a communication issue. If this were, say, Volcano Bay, where every attraction is based on that virtual queue system, maybe that sort of thing wouldn't happen. However, because every OTHER attraction besides Race Through New York has a traditional queuing system, there's this expectation that Race Through New York will as well, which it doesn't. When people get turned down, who's to blame - the guests for not looking ahead of time and reserving their time or looking at the ride info on the map, or the resort for not making sure the guests are informed about the non-traditional queuing system for that one particular ride? We could have a circular argument about that for pages. Is there any signage at entrances to Universal Studios Florida? Is it on the paper maps? Is it in the smartphone app? EDIT: It is on the interactive map, I was just stupid and couldn't find it.

History is important, I'm not arguing with you there. But, as a business, Slagharen has every right to want to move forward. If Slagharen cared so little about Thunder Loop's history, they would have sold the blasted thing for scrap - and they didn't. Part of the reason why these kinds of Schwarzkopf coasters often get restored instead of scrapped is because they're designed to be taken apart and relocated.

For those who are wondering, here's a transportable version of what Dollywood now has...

The whole point behind the Sky Roller and Sky Fly is that you can make your experience as tame or as thrilling as you want it to be.

There has be a threshold worked in. I'm actually doing a project where I'm analyzing the ups and downs of this sort of system. The only way I personally have made it [theoretically] work is to allow for standby guests until the queue length reaches a certain point (I've designated ten minutes) to then switch it to reservation mode with return times based on how many people are experiencing the attraction over a period of time. In reality though, I'm definitely skeptical (yet optimistic) about how this will work in a water park, where you have to hike your way up a billion flights of stairs anyway. It's not like a theme park with a roller coaster or flat ride, which you could theoretically just walk right onto. Perhaps they want to deliberately keep less people in the queue to make the queue / show experience a little more intimate or quiet.

In an interview with Blooloop, the president of Triple Five gave an opening date for the project: Seems like getting all the retailers on board with leases was one of the big hurdles. I kind of get that, I wouldn't want empty spaces for my grand opening either.

Every weekend I visited last season they were running at least two cars. Generally they only use it when the queue starts filling up a bunch of the switchbacks, and you have to go up to the greeter at the entrance and ask for it. Not sure why the greeter in your case didn't know, maybe it was an issue of improper training.

I mean, hiding show buildings from guests is pretty common practice in all destination theme parks unless the story / theme calls for it, the obvious exceptions being "soundstage" buildings like in Universal Studios Florida and Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Sheesh, I work for them in Georgia and even I can't get that good of a rate. Are you sure you have a reservation for a full-size car? And a one-way no less?

Honestly, from a business perspective, I think that they played it perfectly. It gets people to buy a two-park ticket.

Yes, but Universal would be sad to see themselves make less money. Seriously though, hasn't the writing been on the wall for years and years? We're lucky that Hulk, Doctor Doom, and the other outdoor attractions have stuck around for so long.

I'm from Pennsyltucky. It does exist and I would absolutely drag the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre area into it just to see them squirm.

Here you go, here's something I did for one of my park projects that never materialized. I don't usually even finish a NoLimits coaster anymore, but this one has made me happy every time I've opened it since. I'm honestly flabbergasted that I drew up such a "good" coaster. It's pretty much a Mega Lite. 30-ish meters tall, 750-ish meters long. However, the difference is that all of the intense, low-to-the-ground curves are replaced with high sweeping over-banked curves. Without getting into the technical stuff it means that it has the awesome airtime of a "typical" Mega Lite but without the intensity. This makes it my perfect roller coaster because, like Phoenix, I'd be able to ride it over and over without getting headaches or motion sickness.