Reality15

I fail to see where the decision to close the park was unethical. If my local McDonald's closes tomorrow without notice because there's a McDonald's just down the street, does that make it unethical? Hell no, it's a great business decision because now that McDonald's that's staying open is going to have their business. Closing the park was a business decision. Cedar Fair's not denying that they bought the park to close it in order to eliminate competition at Cedar Point, where's the conspiracy theory? They got a hell of a deal on a large amount of land and a few dozen rides they could move to other parks. There is no one to blame for Geauga Lake's downfall, honestly, other than general business decisions. Six Flags made a brilliant business decision growing the park to compete with Cedar Point. At the same time, however, they weren't making very many other good choices, and ended up in a ridiculous amount of debt. Cedar Fair doesn't want competition for Cedar Point, and why would they? The GP loves Cedar Point and it brings in more money every year than most of us could dream of. If you have the chance to eliminate your competition, of course you're going to take that opportunity! The thing people forget about is that saving the Big Dipper would cost a ridiculous amount of money. If it was viable, someone would have done it by now, they've had three years. If someone really wanted to save the Big Dipper, they would, but sitting on the internet complaining about it just makes you sound ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is sitting on the internet calling someone greedy for making a business choice, but that's an argument for another time.

This. In all of my years going to amusement parks, the only game I've EVER played is Fascination, at Cedar Point when it was there and at Indiana Beach. Best amusement park game ever. I'm seriously considering trying to build my own Fascination table.

You do realize that anyone and their 1/2 cousin could edit it to say whatever they want, right? I could go on there and make it say that Superman: The Escape is being replaced by a White Castle. @Mechanic: You might feel stupider for having read it, but think about it, how many other threads are this funny to read?

In the 2nd article about the new ride, if I'm not mistaken, Kinzel already admitted that the new ride won't be built by Intamin (IntaRide). Wouldn't word coming from the CEO rule out Intamin as a possible manufacturer? Just saying, because Screamscape isn't always 100% gospel. I'd give them 20% at best.

Thanks again for coming up, Dave. It was really great having everyone out last night to enjoy my little piece of heaven, Shivering Timbers. And I'm still standing by my original guess that Super Himalaya was a Mack Musik Express. Though when I was leaving the park I did remember that I was wrong about Winky the Whale. It's a Sellner, along with Drummer Boy. What can I say, I was getting tired.

Didn't feel anything at Michigan's Adventure today. Nor did we get any strong storms, perfect day to be in the park.

I met Will on my only visit to Holiday World in 2006. I had just finished my first loop around the park, ending with a ride on the Raven. As I was getting off, I noticed Will was leaving the Raven platform so, being the coaster nerd I still am, I had to introduce myself. 2006 being the year Voyage was new, he asked me what I thought and I told him I honestly preferred the Raven because I didn't like my front-row trip on Voyage. He asked me to give it a second shot and try it in the back seat, and proceeded to walk with me back down to the Voyage, explaining a little bit about the park's history and what working in a park is like. I will never forget my ten minutes talking to Will. I'd like to think that because of that chat, I continue to work in a park year after year, and am going to school to someday be just like Will. Though I only met him once, I will honestly miss him and his dedication and enthusiasm to our industry. Hope those Timberliners in heaven are wonderful, Will.

Yep. I'll be working the control panel at Timbers, hopefully if we get a good turnout doing some Timbers/Michigan's Adventure history trivia.

I'm honestly not sure of the reason we don't allow cameras. My best guess is that we don't want anyone to drop anything off the train, then someone might try to reach down/jump off to get it, it could get caught in one of the wheels... I'm really not sure. The rule was in-place when I transferred up from Cedar Point, I never really asked why it's no longer allowed.

I'm always interested in tagging along. Granted, as long as it's Tuesday through Saturday I'll already be there at the world's greatest wooden coaster, but I'm still interested in meeting some TPR members if you guys want! Just look for me at Wildcat, Timbers, or Timbertown, my name's Jon.

Sad I didn't work today, looks like things were very enjoyable outside making for a great day at the park. Glad to hear you liked Timbers, it's been running great this year every time I ride it, and it feels a lot like it did back when it opened. Hopefully we get some more enthusiasts down to the park to get its ranking back up where it should be.

Here's the blocks that I count: -Station -End of station to top of Lift 1 -Top of lift 1 to top of Lift 2 -Top of Lift 2 to helix -Helix to pre-waiting -Pre-waiting There might even be seven, if it's possible to stop a train in the maintenance shed. But yes, it means dispatching a train every 30 seconds. I'm going to bet that back in the day the train stopped, people got in/out, lap bars were locked, the ride hosts probably had them push up on the lap bars to make sure they were locked, and the train was sent. Judging on a POV video, it looks like interval would be right at 35 seconds, which would be tough, but not impossible. On Maverick I believe interval was 45 seconds, and that's with the amount of checking/gates/loose items we have today, yet we still hit interval constantly in '07. Possible, yes, but very difficult.

Already the Paddlewheel Excursions spiel has been updated to describe a bit of the backstory, and there's even a new piece of themeing related to Shoot the Rapids added. I won't post the spoilers here, go and see it/hear it for yourself. I watched the ride test for a couple minutes and I'm actually impressed. I'm sure all of the water features weren't on yet, but the drops themselves don't look like they'll get you all that soaked as far as the splash goes. I also got to talk with a couple of the crew members, and they seem really excited about the season. I think Shoot the Rapids is going to be a really great thing for the park this year, despite so many people complaining about it.

I'll be there on opening day, I'm taking a bunch of people from work down for the day, since we get in for free as Cedar Fair employees. Honestly, I think I'm looking forward to Shoot the Rapids more than riding any coaster at this point.

Same here! Add running out of the place as quickly as possible and we took the same whore trip. Then again, the credit whorish thing was when I went back to get the Big Mike card, which was gone. Oh, Jeepers...

I hope they have considering the park opens in two weeks. Two weeks is a lot of time. I'd say you could probably expect full-scale testing to start the second half of this week, but the majority of the "testing" on a ride like this is things such as the pumps, show water, and station movement, which they've already been doing. A water ride is completely different than a coaster when it comes to how it has to be tested.

Apparently according to a time lapse someone posted, they moved it up and down the second hill a few times today. They're probably testing sensors and systems, I'm sure they haven't gotten to full-scale testing yet.

Using the microphones for anything other than giving instructions or hyping the crowd in a professional manner is against Cedar Fair policy, especially something like that video. Back when I started they were very strict with the policy and wrote up people quite frequently for violations. Nowadays, however, it seems like the policy is very lax and rarely enforced. Personally, whenever I'm I have a ride on whatever crew I'm in charge of that involves some kind of a spiel, I usually check people about once a week to make sure their spiels are appropriate and professional, simply because I've been on both sides of the video here. There's no reason stuff like this should be happening, and I highly doubt it's being condoned by management when it does happen.

Back when I worked there, the stuff in the rec center was pretty much the same that you'd find in the cafeteria, just a lot more limited of a selection, but both of those are essentially the same food you'll see in the park. They didn't have Subway in the rec center back then, but that was also 2007. My suggestion? Buy a mini fridge and buy your own food at Meijer to eat. That way you can pack your lunches and eat your own breakfast/dinner. It's also really handy for freezing your water bottle every night before you go to work in the morning.

I'm going to place my money on having a system like Maverick. Two boats unload/load at once, once loaded they move forward, one into the trough one into the waiting position. Two new boats roll into the station. When the first dispatched boat is far enough away, the operators send the second. Or they could use the system used on the Intamin rapids ride at Michigan's Adventure, where there are several positions for boats in the station. They load in position 2 and, depending on crowd level, position 3, with position 4 being waiting and position 1 being pre-dispatch. It's a very confusing process, but it might work on a ride like this. My two guesses.

Quite the contrary. I built the computer myself, just didn't have the funding for a Blu-Ray drive to go in it at the time. The computer acts as a media center, with the TV tuner (DVR) hooked up to the HD cable box, meaning all my shows are recorded in full HD on the computer, then played back the same way. It's basically a big tease for when I can finally get the Blu-Ray drive to go in it and start watching movies in HD as well. Someday the technology will be there for downloadable HD movies, and when that day comes I will be a happy man. I mean, it's possible, but the internet just has to catch up. -Jon Roost

This is a great idea, and something I'm really glad to see you guys doing. I voted for the last choice, however, simply because of what I wrote in the previous DVD thread, hoping that someday there will be a way to purchase an HD file over the internet much like the .mp4 downloads now. I don't own a Blu-Ray player, and don't really have the money to buy one, but the HDTV is hooked up to a computer that can play HD files/games/other stuff that way. Still, despite my different answer, I really think this is a great idea and I hope it turns out to be really successful for you guys. The RAW series is perfect for HD viewing, and I can just imagine riding some of my favorite coasters on a big-screen HDTV. Keep making these awesome movies and doing what you guys do for the coaster community! -Jon "Can't wait until my paycheck to get that Club TPR membership" Roost

This. Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of the Harry Potter franchise, granted I'm engaged to a giant Potter-nerd, and I can't honestly say I'm very excited about this, more so because I see this as an operations nightmare. Think about it, you have Dueling Dragons, which is a nice high-capacity coaster, and possibly the Forbidden Journey might be higher capacity, but then you have things like the Hippogriff coaster, and we all know the through-put on roller skaters isn't that great. Combine that with things like the personalized wand service thing, which can accommodate one person at a time. I just think that while Universal wanted to remain "true to the books and movies", they're creating a headache for themselves when the Potter-nerds arrive in hordes.

I'll bet you any money it's an April Fools day joke from Cedar Point and Kings Dominion. The Carowinds, Kings Island, and Worlds of Fun blogs are all still up, and Worlds of Fun even posted a new blog post yesterday. Apparently Lance at Screamscape didn't get the joke.

Wow, Shane, thanks for posting this. White Water Landing was my first "big" ride at Cedar Point before I would ride the coasters, and I actually spent a night when I was younger marathoning it. Even in 2003 when Dragster was new and popular, my favorite ride was still White Water Landing and I really miss it a lot. While I absolutely love Maverick, I wish there was a way we could have this ride back. It's really too bad flumes like this are getting torn out, luckily I still have my 1983 hydroflume up here in Michigan. Thanks again, Shane!