ginzo

What about cages? If I can put my wife into a cage, I can put kids there as well.

Oh but the leash product is just another weapon in the arsenal of the crazed stroller people. If they can't knock you down with the stroller, maybe their kid can sneak by you and trip you with the leash. Seriously, those leashes are pretty bad in heavy crowds.

I'm a pretty big fan of jazz, and even I think that statement is a little bit extreme. Within each genre there are usually a few acts with undeniable talent or originality that aren't just doing what everyone else is doing. For rock take an act like Radiohead. Both classical and jazz artists have covered Radiohead. Many critics and fans consider OK Computer to be one of the greatest albums ever. For electronic music (death to the awful MTV term electronica) take Massive Attack. Again a completely original act that copies nobody, and winds up being copied by other artists countless times. That being said, I think your point is generally valid if taken to mean that the general standard for music today is lower than it was 50 years ago. That's undeniable. 50 years ago you couldn't pull studio tricks to make bad artists sound great. So, you had to be pretty good. And the jazz artists that were popular in that day were 1,000,000,000,000,000x more talented than the pop artists the industry bombards us with today.

It's more like a musty hole with random crap in it--but there is the wonderful air conditioning. And during Fearfest it becomes the . . . Yeah, I can't say I'm overly excited to head back to Kings Dominion. We did all the coasters there. It's kind of like what if Kings Island had slightly better coasters. But, I try to never miss a dark ride or a fun house. Fun houses, especially, are a sadly rare thing these days. to someone taking the time to paint a sign without taking the time to check their punctuation.

As if I wasn't already completely sold on the Mainland Europe Trip 2008. This just further convinces me. I want to send my deposit, like a month ago.

Kings Dominion has a fun house? Crud. Now I have to go back.

The crowds are sold out because old people have lots of money Yeah, coastering has pretty much replaced my former obsession with raving/clubbing. Though there was a 2-3 year gap between the two where I was too busy with work and school to have any hobbies.

You're the man now dog.

I agree that parks should be more equipped to handle these situations, especially since this park since Six Flags is supposedly rebranding into a chain of family-oriented parks. But, I also don't think that yelling at park employees is going to convince the park to divert their limited resources towards this end. I am also bothered by this belief that many parents have that the world is out to steal their child. Yes, there are horrible people out there, but they aren't lurking everywhere. The vast majority of these cases turn out fine. Parks can't be expected to lock the place down and give everyone a body cavity search every time a kid goes walkabout. This person should write a very calm, rational letter to Shapiro about the problem. Apart from the business reasons to work on this, it's just the right thing to do for their customers.

Yeah, you really can't expect a park to drop everything because of a "lost parent". Many parks have "lost parents" booths to help with this situation. If they closed the gates every time a kid got lost, the gates would be closed more than they were open. As others have pointed out, your child is your responsibility, not the park's. 99.999% of the time when a child gets lost in a park everything turns out fine. So suck it up and stop expecting for the worst!

Thanks for the information. I've been to parks that don't enforce that at all, and the ride is much crazier as a result. This still doesn't account for their kicking me off the edge seat. I suppose they could have been trying to balance the riders out. But, I've never seen any other park bother with something like that.

This is hilarious. An ACE troll who types in all caps?! No way. You sure are living up to the club's stellar reputation there, buddy! I hear there's an ACE event in bantron. Let me phrase it in a way you can understand... STAY AWAY FROM OUR FORUMS, IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU. Bantron? Awww...a quick review of that guy's posting history yields some hilarious results. I'm pretty confident that my 10-year-old brother can write better than this guy, who is apparently 35. This leads me to believe that he is a little bit, uhhh "special". Yeah, I've often felt the same way coming back from just the trips that I go on myself. While fully exploring parks is cool, I think doing more parks and getting more credits always wins. On a recent trip we did all of Kings Dominion's coasters, except the kiddie with the height restriction, in 4 hours. Later on in that same trip we did Knoebels in just 2 hours. That was a real bummer because Knoebels is such an awesome park. However, doing this allowed us to hit Hersheypark in the same day, which gave us 13 credits instead of 3 for the day.

The customer should share in the blame for demanding such a crazy woodie that they can't possibly maintain. J2 easily has the most insane wooden coaster lay out that I've seen. S&S did great work with Avalanche @ Timber Falls. That's my #2 woodie right now.

I doubt you'll see any major Intamin or B&M installations at Holiday World any time soon. Although they're rapidly growing, they've still just reached the 1 million guests mark. This makes $20 million coasters a bit of a stretch. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that their next coaster will be another Gravity Group. Though I doubt they're installing another coaster so soon after the Voyage. Personally, I'd like to see them spruce up their flats. A Falling Star, Giant Swing, Giant Frisbee, or even just replacing their bumper cars with some Lusse Skooters would really help them out.

I think LoCoSuMo is worse when facing backwards. It is rough, but believe me you'll live. Never leave credits on the table! Beech Bend should be a pretty good time. The park isn't that great, but the coaster makes the drive worth it.

Cedar Point won't let you on Jr. Gemini without a kid. So, you'll be at 49, unless you can borrow a kid. I look forward to the IB photos. IB is still one of my favorites.

I agree. The water park definitely seems to be the main draw for Clementon. Had they sold me a rides only wrist band for less money, I'd have felt less ripped off.

I gave the place a chance, and it just didn't do it for me. The fact that their 3-year-old coaster runs like crap is the main downfall to me. If the coaster ran great, all else would be forgivable. Let's face it: the "live bear show" isn't exactly going to turn the place around. The place needs to be cleaned up, but they're turning it into more of a fringe establishment by doing that. I found the place to be very unfriendly, which is very bad for a smaller park. I bought some water ice, and they made me hand over the receipt to prove that I wasn't stealing, even though I was the only customer in sight. The Falling Star ops yelling at me for taking an edge seat didn't help as well. They charged me $24 to enter a park with one barely working coaster and a handful of flats. The least they could do was let me enjoy the edge seat. I'm honestly not sure what could fix this place. It's a very sub par small park that is just an hour away from Great Adventure, which has arguably the best coaster collection in the country.

Awesome. I look forward to getting those sweet AARP discounts. Maybe TPR will offer an AARP discount on the trips some day.

Woah, I never said anything about a mixed group. In fact, I was decrying how unmixed ACE seems to be, at least the EC. My point was that I'd feel out of place with a group that is predominately in their 50s. Don't you find it to be just a little bit strange that a group dedicated to coasters doesn't mix more "young blood" into their upper rankings? From the old school photos I've seen, it didn't used to be that way at all. You're totally right, Chuck. 30 is mere months away. And then the AARP will be knocking on my door 20 years after that, which isn't as much time as it sounds. That's because they ARE better than everyone. Don't you know that being on the ACE committee delegates you to rock star status? I bet those guys get more models hitting on them than Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt combined.

We went to Clementon a few weeks back. It's easily the crappiest park I've ever been to. Although I understand that it used to be a good ride, J2 now beats you up every bit as badly as SOB did during its prime. A small park like that just isn't up to the task of maintaining such an extreme woodie. Oh and btw, J2 is down indefinitely for maintenance. http://www.screamscape.com/html/smaller_parks.htm Scheduled maintenance? In the middle of the season? The park has one coaster and they schedule it for maintenance right in the middle of the season? They wouldn't let us ride one person per seat on the Falling Star, which is one of the most rickety flats I've ever been on. They do run it in insane mode, but they rob you of the awesome lateral forces by forcing you to ride with a partner. Then they wouldn't let me sit on the edge for the second ride, even though the thing was mostly empty. I left the park after about an hour feeling completely ripped off and wanting my money back. Remember how Robb cheered when they tore down Psyclone? I'm going to cheer whenever this pointless park closes its doors for good.

Are any of the executive committee members under the age of 50? I've seen very few people under 40 sporting those incredibly stylish nylon ACE jackets. You know, the ones that look 20 years out of style. I have nothing against middle aged people, but I'm not exactly jumping over myself to join a group that's mostly the same age as my parents. Honestly the only reason I'd consider joining a club is to attend an enthusiast event that required it. And once parks finally realize that you don't need to send some group of senior citizens $50 a year to be an enthusiast, I'll have no reason to join at all.

Disneyland California Adventure Knott's Legoland Universal Hollywood SFMM Santa Monica Pier Magic Kingdom Animal Kingdom EPCOT Disney-MGM Busch Gardens Africa Dollywood Kings Island Cedar Point Kennywood Waldameer Darien Lake Geauga Lake Indiana Beach Busch Gardens Europe Kings Dominion SFA Clementon (yuck!) SFGAdv Knoebels Hersheypark Probably later this year: Celebration City Silver Dollar City SFStL. Universal Orlando/IOA Holiday World

I felt the same way about Thunderhead when I rode it last year; that it was overrated and not as good as Rumbler. But, I got a great early afternoon front seat ride on it this year with several nice little pops of air. Thunderhead really tore through its course at a great, manic pace. It's still no El Toro though I'm going to try to get the OzCat credit in late August.

Yeah, it's absolutely true that dispatching a train is better for capacity than spending a long time trying to fill a few empty seats. However, I could see some idiot ops using this as an excuse to send out half empty trains. The best crew I've seen this year by far is Griffon's crew. They really cranked out those odd-shaped trains, and filled empty seats using the single rider line. Seeing full trains dispatched that quickly is an awesome spectacle.