Electerik

My (perhaps overly-harsh) translation: Dan Koch is begrudgingly taking the title until someone else in the family is ready to step up.

Based on BGW's "copying" of Spider-Man and Soarin', I was really hoping this would be more Tower-of-Terror-ish.

I'm excited about Legoland, and I'm sure it will do well. But I love execu-speak way too much to let this one go by: So...Cypress Gardens' big problem was that they didn't make money. Yeah, that'll do it.

Indiana Beach is currently my favorite park, so the more time there the better, so far as I am concerned. I don't think there's much night life, honestly. Keep in mind though, that even though the park's opening time might be listed at 11:00am, there's no gate charge and it's easy enough to go in early and just sort of wander around taking photos and whatnot. (I don't think this is frowned upon. I stayed at the on-site hotel that's in the park on my last visit and was wandering around the midways at least an hour before anything actually opened. Saw and spoke to plenty of management-type employees during that time, who all seemed fine with us being there. But I never actually asked. So, grain of salt.)

Great update from SeaWorld San Diego. I grew up in Southern California, but I really wish I had visited this park more as an adult. My memories of it are all confused with those of Marineland. Really? Personally, I suspect we'll see it again within a year. /Pure speculation, obviously. //But I'll bet you a park map.

I really like Lake Winnie. And I encourage everyone who goes there to also check out Rock City, which is just a few miles down the road.

On International Drive in Orlando, right next door to WonderWorks, sits Hawaiian Rumble mini golf. Mini golf, ice cream, and volcanoes. What more could you need? It used to be Ben & Jerry's. Now it's Hershey's. Is that a bad sign? Well, that's going to make it difficult to play, I must say. So I can't swing my putter, and I can't go onto the course. Man, they have a lot of rules around here. Like many of Orlando's 36-hole mini golf courses, this one has an "ADA course" which consists of nine holes from one course, followed by nine from the other. A fairly typical hole. I do like the different color/consistency "sand trap" carpets. A tougher jump than it looks. I am dedicated to my game. Open your eyes, Misty! The Volcano is less scary if you can see it! The volcano used to "erupt" every 15 minutes or so, but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore. Pity. On the other hand, "Joe Vs. The Volcano" is a highly underrated movie, and I recommend that everyone go watch it. It's a nice enough course, but there's not much here to really make it stand out. (Perhaps an erupting volcano would help...?) Action putt! Hawaiian Rumble. When you don't care enough to play the very best.

Great TR! I especially like this shot: /Yeah, I know I'm weird.

I liked Jack dying. I most certainly didn't like everyone being dead. It was Battlestar Galactica all over again. Lots of talk about a plan, but clearly there wasn't one. Oh well, the first five seasons were good.

Why? Six Flags loved putting out press releases about their guest satisfaction surveys, so surely they would take into account the fact that "angry people waiting in longer lines=lower satisfaction scores and people MUCH less likely to spend extra money at the park or return for future visits to spend more money." No one is questioning that SF has tons of room for improvement in their operations...There's just no logical explanation for why those bad operations are to drive sales of flashpasses. I'm forced to agree that Six Flags' bad operations are not to drive sales, simply because they had bad operations long before they had flashpasses. Still, don't the bad operations themselves sort of prove that they don't particularly understand/care about guest satisfaction? My point here is not so much that any park is currently "slowing things down" to sell more front-of-the-line passes. But rather that it will happen eventually. Remember that no one use to sell these things at all. If virtual queues existed, they were always free. Many people said then that no one would ever try to sell them because it would anger the regular guests. Yet here we are. The one thing has led to the other, and it doesn't take much vision to see where it will go next. I could, of course, be wrong. But I wasn't last time.

Add me to the conspiracy theorist list, 'cause if we're not there yet, it's the future. Imagine a situation like the one at Universal Orlando, where one of the perks of staying at an onsite hotel is skipping the regular lines. Now, what happens when that perk becomes pointless because the rides have no lines? Do you think those guests who "paid extra" for that benefit just shrug it off, or do they instead complain bitterly and demand money back? As for Six Flags, I'm fairly certain that any theory that involves them being too smart to piss off their customers can be safely dismissed.

Breathalyzer? No, it's just Kool-Aid.

Holiday World and Cedar Point are wildly different parks, with wildly different relationships with their wildly different fans...? Holiday World has built up a lot of goodwill with their fan base by being forthright, friendly, and inclusive. Cedar Point lives and dies by the sword, so to speak--being as fickle and demanding of its fan base as they are of the park.

I'm kind of excited about this, as I've never seen any of the "after dark" stuff before. However.... "Mystifying"? They're calling their own fireworks show odd and perplexing??

Lots of people talking about his voice. Count me among those who actually really like his music. You'll never get old.

^ I thought it was great! I couldn't have drawn something even vaguely recognizable as a goat at a non-moving drawing table if I had a magical goat-drawing pen.

So...for two seasons, all Sun and Jin did on the show was look for each other. They finally find each other, and they're dead. People die randomly in real life, with no care for story arcs, but I expect more than that from fiction. Frankly, on a show with so much talk of "purpose," major character deaths should--at the very least--serve to save or help other major characters. This just felt pointless.

Honestly, I had no idea that was even an issue. There was no signage indicating anything like that. We just walked up and rode. No one acted like it was weird. Of course, I also never saw them come close to filling the train, so maybe that had something to do with it...? ^ That's a good answer, too.

This update is going to be a little bit different. In fact, it's going to be a lot different. And, actually, kind of stupid. Ready? As you may recall back from the Gourmet McDonald's update, Erik & Smisty have a very special (though entirely platonic) relationship with TPR's artificial intelligence TwitterBot, @ThemeParkReview (hereafter referred to simply as "Bryan.") A couple of weeks ago, Bryan contacted us requesting help for a new Twitter contest. The idea was for people to go to parks, write things down on signs that would normally be tweets, take photos, and then upload them to Twitter. He called it "analog tweeting," and he wanted us to provide an example. Which brings us to this update, which is all about Erik & Smisty scouring Busch Gardens Tampa, making fools of themselves, looking for just the right photo to help launch the contest. I thought up two "analog tweets" that I thought might be interesting and printed them out ahead of time. Then Misty came up with three better ones in the car on the way there and hand-drew them, making me feel stupid and small. Analog Tweeting at Busch Gardens Tampa Nope, that won’t work. Can’t read the sign. There, that's better! I'm pretty sure that's less than 140 characters--but, quite frankly, I'm too lazy to count. Yes, yes we are. This ride was closed, and maintenance men were examining it. The other two ran away when Misty approached them, but this one was game. No comment. Impressed by Smisty's drawing skills? You ain't seen nothin' yet. The main reason to be on twitter: #PostAGoatThursday Oh my god! Dirt! I'm not even sure what we were trying to do here. A couple of the performers from the disco show in Timbuktu (who are obviously used to random). Actually, it kind of is a construction update. Pretty sure there's a new coaster going in here somewhere. The best part of this photo is that it was not staged. I was just trying to figure out which sign to hold up. The stilt-walkers were highly intrigued by #PostAGoatThursday. (And who could blame them?) In fact, they all wanted in on the act. It is my sincere hope that this update has made exactly as much sense whether you are on twitter or not. Regardless, Bryan got his example, and the contest has now officially been launched on Twitter. My understanding is that it will run all season, and that everyone who enters (and does it properly) will automatically win a bag o' crap. Check out twitter.com/ThemeParkReview for more details and/or to see how it's going.

Great trip report. Lots of detail I hadn't seen before. Thank you.

Eh, they're all pretty much the same. Okay, okay--the ones with Millennium Flyer trains are distinguishable from the ones with PTCs. /CCI equaled ice cream, GCI equals soft serve.

I think DarKastle is a great ride, when judged on its own merit. But Spider-Man is, in my book, the best dark ride ever. The problem, I think, is that DarKastle's creators mimicked Spider-Man a little too well, and didn't put a enough effort into making DarKastle unique. About the only thing DarKastle does that Spider-Man doesn't is the "angled trees" room (which is cool). Otherwise, it feels like virtually the same ride, minus some stuff (like Spider-Man's awesome "falling building" ascent scene). And I'm not so sure DarKastle's storyline is better, even if you do overlook the fact that it's inherently more difficult to follow. Slightly less silly, perhaps--but that's about it. Kudos to BGW for copying Spider-Man. I think that was a good move, and it makes BGW a better park. But in their heart-of-hearts, I doubt even they believe that DarKastle is superior. /For the record, I have worked on Spider-Man. //On the other hand, BGW was my favorite park during the time DarKastle and Big Bad Wolf co-existed.

^ Definitely going to happen, at some point. Indeed, the plan is to cover every section of every major Florida park, eventually. Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Misty and I were there today as well! (I was in full nerd mode, wearing my Millennium Force shirt.) Lots of changes at the park, even from just a year-and-a-half ago (when we last went). Bummed about Rhino Rally's water section, but maybe this will increase capacity. (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here, and assuming they've run so few vehicles for the last few years in order to keep the water section from being overworked. (But that's pure speculation on my part.))

Biscuits and country-style gravy. It's a Southern thing.