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I've also only been on El Toro as far as Intamin woodies go. By the same token, it's not fair to hold it against Intamin that US parks have been so slow to adopt their obviously amazing woodies. I imagine that the cost has a lot to do with it. *Every* Intamin woodie is a top 10 ride. No other vendor can make that claim right now.

Are real estate developers really that hot for the property? With the housing market downturn and the fact that Cleveland isn't doing well economically (recently called the poorest city in the US) maybe it's not such a great deal right now. GL's economic woes, however, may just mirror the overall picture for Cleveland.

I'd *love* to see that concept. Then CF could have a mega amusement park and a mega waterpark in the same region. Though I think it's a less than prudent idea considering how short the season has to be in Northern Ohio. I'm heavily into woodies, and it wouldn't bother me that much to see that John Miller go. GL uses trains designed for midgets on it, which ruined it for me. Anyway, I hope they do something, anything with this park other than just tear out rides. Elissa is probably correct in that CF just doesn't know how to run a plain old park anymore. Maybe they should sell it to someone who can?

Yeah, because Kennywood is about 134089123490234092340923809238904x better than GL. It's a well balanced park that maintains its coasters very well, and has concessions that are reasonably priced and decent. They have great flat rides, nice coasters, dark rides, something for everyone really. GL, on the other hand, has concrete, cornhole, and bad coasters.

I know that there was track work done on Villain, but it sure doesn't seem that way. That ride is still SOB rough. Anyway, I hope they can turn the park into something better than it is now. Their current approach disturbs me though.

I don't know too many "traditional family parks" that have an Intamin Impulse, B&M Floorless, and Vekoma Flying Dutchman. I do think that they should have kept the SLC however. Ted, you make a reasonable point about them removing large coasters to refocus GL into a local family park. Your argument fails in that they're only removing big rides, and not replacing them with family park attractions. Cornhole doesn't count. And they're not really keeping up the smaller rides, like the woodies, very well. As someone who is probably moving to Cleveland next year, I would ***LOVE*** to see GL reinvented as a fun little traditional park. But I don't see it. I see a dead slab of concrete. I'll believe them more when I see the dark rides, fun woodies, smaller flats, etc. Guess I'll have to go to Waldameer for that.

Yeah Scott, it's just a bizarre scene. What gets me is CF's perfidy about it. If they don't want to support GL as a rides park anymore, then just come out and SAY that's what you're doing. This approach of slowly draining out all the big coasters, and then telling the media that you're frustrated with the park's attendance is not honest. If they were serious about turning GL around they'd be investing in the park, not removing more rides. There are so many great things that could be done for the park at a moderate cost, like say installing a GCII woodie. Right now the rides park is basically an excuse to sell bad lemonade for $5. And they do super customer unfriendly stuff like yell at you for taking pictures in coaster stations, even though there is no posted policy about that.

Man the demise of GL is just a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Why doesn't old man Kinzel just admit that he hates having coasters so close to his precious? Because from this vantage point it looks like they're not even giving the park any chance.

I'm glad most people seemed to like Maverick. It's my #1 steel ahead of all 4 US B&M hypers, SFA S:ROS, Darien Lake S:ROS, Storm Runner, Xcelerator, TTD, KK, etc. El Toro is the only coaster of my 200 credits that I like more.

Yeah, it's amazing that they're pumping this kind of money into any of their parks so soon after the merger. With their debt load and talk of trying to get bought out by private equity, one would have assumed that they'd be playing it safe for a while.

Nobody knows because the ride ain't built yet.

Uhm, the B&M restraints absolutely DESTROY those god awful shin bashing cages Six Flags uses on the S:ROS coasters. Nothing like getting your shins smashed with a metal bar each and every time you get airtime. Not to mention the possibility of the side bars scraping the hell out of your legs. No, cuz I R illiterite.

Wow, and after all the groundless speculation about this being a floorless giga inverted diving machine with AIDS, it turns out that Screamscape was right all along. This coaster looks great. I wish it had predrop like on Bull. The trains are EXTREMELY pointless also. Being able to ride along with 3 of your friends in one row is one of the best parts about B&Ms.

Two chicks at the same time.

That's what's so great about using ING Direct or Emigrant Direct. They're totally separate from your regular bank. You have to login and manually transfer the money back to your checking. And it takes a few days for the transaction to go through.

My main budgeting trick is to use my direct deposit at work to put a set amount into a high APR savings account (ING Direct, Emigrant Direct, etc). You just divide the total cost of the trip by the number of paychecks you have between now and when the trip payments will come due. This tells you how much to put away with each check. Saving aggressively often leaves me annoyingly short on cash at the beginning of the month when the bills are due, but at least I know I'm not wasting my money on stupid crap.

Thank you! I find it almost fraudulent when Kings Island talks about "one of a kind thrills" in reference to Firehawk. It's a 6-year-old ride with a new coat of paint that is chipping already. Ain't nothing special about it. All the life has been sucked out of this park, and it's so bad I actually have no plans to even buy a season pass next year. Joe "will get a season pass just as soon as KI installs a real coaster" C.

Thanks for the testimonial! It's nice to read this kinda stuff, as it makes me feel better about the 8 grand or so that I'm going to be spending on the Europe trip next year. Of course it's going to be great, but it's easy to talk yourself out of spending that kind of cash. The wife is already giving me grief about it, but I *know* she'll thank me for dragging her along. This always happens with her on trips. I hope you can make it out. I really think this will easily be the best TPR trip to date.

Your friend is wrong. Japan has had its share of coaster accidents, but so has the US. And look at how long Steel Dragon 2000 was closed after its accident. The Japanese do NOT play around with safety. Heck, they had the police in investigating after the accident on the Togo stand up earlier this year, as if it was a murder or something.

I'll take useless speculation for a thousand, Alex.

I'm glad that you are able to pull your class trips off well. I think most of the school days go OK. But I've seen them go horribly, horribly wrong, and watched park police put up with some straight BS that should have resulted in ejection for a few kids.

Try to check out the enthusiast event. They really go all out. Everything from really good food (I'm quite picky on that) to a neat night time cruise on their boat to uncrowded ERT. I'll try to get my TR up soon so you can see some of the cool stuff they did for us.

I assumed that there would be a similar thread to this, but found nothing when I searched. So, Intamin for the win! Though I've only been on El Toro, nothing measures up to the raw intensity of that ride. Voyage is especially owned by El Toro, in speed, airtime, and forcefulness. Intamins are also built to last, unlike the vast majority of woodies out there. And El Toro is easily the most awesome looking coaster I've seen. Honorable mention goes to S&S. Avalanche is my #2 woodie, but unfortunately J2 is awful. GCI doesn't do it for me. I've had a few good rides on Thunderhead and KY Rumbler, but airtime > curves.

You should check out their enthusiast event. Cameron convinced me to hit it last weekend, and it was amazing. I need to get around to posting my PTR. IB should put Cameron on their payroll. He definitely drums up a lot of business for them.

It depends. Had you joined us for the school day we had the displeasure of attending at Kennywood back in May you might have a different opinion. I've never seen such an unruly pack of savages in my life. I'd see 5-10 line jump attempts every time we queued for a ride. Security was pretty good about pulling jumpers out, but they did nothing beyond that. I even saw one girl aggressively argue with park police that she was ALLOWED to jump line for Jack Rabbit. She left in a huff. Pretty funny because park police could obviously give a crap whether she rode or not. I voted to ban them based on this one experience. But I've been on several other school days and didn't have much of a problem.