ginzo

I hate it how parks always find the most annoying bastards in the park to ride near me. The last time I rode Fire @ IOA I had to sit next to some drunk white trash woman who was hitting and berating her son. She made an event of unfastening the belt that safeguards the OTSRs, and then called her son a "chicken" for having his seat belt properly fastened. Then there was the kid that sat behind us on the mine train at SFMM and screamed, "It's so intense. Mother. Mother. We're all going to die. It's so intense. It's so intense. Mother. Mother." He did this for the entire ride cycle. Why I didn't strangle him is beyond me. Then there are the random morons that scream for the entire cycle, even during completely not scary parts of the ride.

The best foot choppers are on Superman: Tower of Power at SFKK. Hands down.

Yeah, modernizing the Fantasyland dark rides could be very good if they preserved the original spirit of the rides. Drastic changes, like turning Toad into a Sally shooting dark ride, could be awful.

I'd rank them as being good, but not my favorite. This is largely because I hate the restraints. No ride should slam a bar into your shins. I definitely prefer Nitro and SFOG's Goliath. I haven't been on SFNE's S:ROS yet, but I imagine I'd have to give it a similar ranking if it has those same awful restraints.

Very true. I've had probably 20-30 cycles on Voyage, and the rides have fallen into 3 basic categories: 1) OMG. Best. Ride. Ever. 2) Meh, boring and no airtime. 3) I just went 12 rounds with Mike Tyson when he was 20 years old. Your night ride may have been better because the ride "warmed up". My current low ranking of Voyage is largely because the one cycle I had this year fell into category 2. I would have liked to get more than one cycle, but the ride was down for a good part of the day I went.

I'm going to disagree that El Toro feels like those coasters. I think it has a unique feeling that is not exactly like a woodie or a steelie. The trains run with a certain peppiness that regular woodies don't have, like some invisible force is pushing the train from behind. The little drop on El Toro after it turns back away from the lift hill (heading into the twister finale) in the back seat is the most forceful drop I know of on any coaster. No regular woodie does anything close to that.

Although I never miss a chance to make fun of Millennium Force, calling it horrible is going overboard. I had a pretty good time marathon riding it opening weekend during the hotel ERT. It is fun. What's horrible is the absurd amount of hype attached to Millennium Force. Some people just can't see beyond the 300 ft lift hill.

Great article!

Trying to maintain Voyage seems like trying to control flooding on the Mississippi with sandbags. You can hold the water back for a time, but after a while it's going to mess you up. Even true believers like HW are going to eventually start considering the effect on the old bottom line of extensive track work every year, especially after they install another coaster or two. Can you say more trims to come?

Try the Raven at night in the back seat I have and it still isn't better than Voyage IMO. Voyage used to be my #1, but I had a much lower coaster count then. Also, the trims ruined my favorite part of the ride. And calling Voyage the top airtime woodie seems like a farce. I've had several cycles on Voyage where I got little to no airtime. My bet is, short of a miracle, in 10 years time nobody will like Voyage, except those that enjoy SOB. Then again HW could continue to retrack 20% of the ride each year. Though eventually they'll get sick of that.

Try the Raven at night in the back seat Wow, the "like being thrown down a flight of stairs" is a really unappealing similie. People break their necks and die from that. That person may as well have said, "The final third is like having your teeth knocked out from getting repeatedly kicked in the mouth with steel toe boots."

And then they trimmed the best part.

Only 135 miles between the two. If I'm already driving ~1,000 miles round trip to the Dells, then another ~270 miles isn't a big deal for a good new credit. Don't think I'll go back to the Dells until something new is added. This would give me an excuse to go to that region.

It is going to be removed. Didn't you read the plan? They're going to replace it with a Vekoma SLC, probably the one from Geauga Lake.

I'm from Cincinnati, and I visited WDW first when I was around 12. This was mostly my parents' decision, but I remember really wanting to go. Disney World was just the awesome place to go. Disneyland wasn't even considered. I don't think Midwest people in general vacation in California nearly as much as they do Florida. I didn't do Disneyland until January of this year.

This could be really good news as it would give me a great excuse to head back to the Dells. I just hope we're not talking a kiddie coaster here. Is that from Screamscape? It would be nice if you would post links to your sources.

I think their common trick with suppliers is if they get multiple products/services from a supplier they try to get them to sell them one thing at cost and let them profit off another thing. I'm pretty sure they do that with bikes. They force the companies to sell them the cheaper bikes at or below cost so that they can also sell the more expensive bikes that they actually make money from.

You know what else sucks? Getting a message on MySpace that says, "What am I gonna do? I ain't gonna butt rape you or anything." You need to step back a minute and ponder just how creepy that is. Put your lust aside for a minute or two and consider what would be going through that guy's head when he got a message like that.

Walmart does suck, but they do have obscenely low prices on certain things. The low pricing comes from their bullying their suppliers around, often forcing them into selling things at or near cost. Heck, Walmart is powerful enough to push Procter and Gamble around. Name another firm who can do that. Yeah, Sam Walton was one of the main proponents of "Buy American". But these days it's "Buy Cheap Chinese Crap".

Cheap wine.

Although I prefer Maverick, I also love California Screamin'. And frankly CS is a far better fit for a Disney park.

Wrong. http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/main.asp?webtag=JL1110&nav=start&prettyurl=%2FJL1110%2Fstart That is the best roller coaster site.

Getting into medical school is a pain in the butt. Surgical residencies are a brutal, soul smashing experience. Matching into a highly competitive specialty is another pain in the butt. And you'll be competing against some amazing students for that coveted plastic surgery residency. Students that frankly are a lot more intelligent and motivated than you present yourself as being. Not being able to stick with one thing for more than a few weeks doesn't make you a great candidate to become a surgeon.

Dick Kinzel seemed especially proud of the Beast when talking about the purchase of Kings Island in an interview earlier this year. But this is the same sycophant that described his bulldozed Geauga Lake "new and exciting". Bottom line is you're right. If they won't even put the money into properly maintaining the wood at the flagship park then this principle is doubly so for the lower-on-the-food-chain parks (aka everything but CP).

GOB isn't welcome at Disney anyway. They only hire Alliance Approved magicians. Depends on the model. If you have the earlier models, like the HT p133 or the i180, then yeah it's a little clumsy around corners. However, the current model, the i2, is very smooth around corners and evasive maneuvers. Before turning was in a little knob on the handlebar, vary similar to a motorcycle throttle. In the i2, the turning is by physically moving the entire handlebar left and right. This gives a sort of skiing motion, allowing for the ability to take corners easily and effortlessly. On the other hand, ECVs alone are a major hassle in safety and numbers. They take up an enormous footprint and, with their power and limited breaking ability, cause many a run over foot or a run over guest. It's also the case that, in my experiences, a good number of people who rent the ECV and don't use them normally, can't drive them safely. I've had my shins bashed many a time by an incoming ECV simply because the driver did not know how, or refused, to break before coming in contact with me. Adding another motorized machine could lead to a chaotic state. The Segways, though the driver is required to know how use the machine safely, also can go up to 12 miles per hour. That zipping through a crowded park on a hot summer day is hard enough to do for some of the managers I saw at Disney, let alone a guest. Weighing in on both sides, I feel in my gut that I side with the people with the Segways, but on one condition. I think they should be allowed, but they have to be key governed. There is a way to electronically govern the speed of the Segway through its key and I believe that govern should be to the same speed as the rented ECVs. That way everyone is still on a same page for safety in terms of speed. They should also be the guest’s property. The parks should not start a policy to rent them at the gate. I know that's not mentioned, but I can already see the pathway going that direction. In my thinking, the Segway might actually be safer than an ECV because of the smaller footprint, less torque on the wheels, a required knowledgeable user, and the ability for an outside body to stop the machine from colliding into them if the situation arises. Overall, they could be considered a safety hazard, but not more of a safety hazard than an ECV. I apologize or the long post. I really took this matter into consideration. Stuart Thanks for the detailed post. I find it very hard to disagree with you. If Disney's principal complaint, that Segways go too fast to be safe, can be addressed by lowering the top speed of the Segways then they should be allowed. Disney is smart enough to know that excessively going against the disabled community is a losing position for them.