ginzo

To who - enthusiasts with hundreds of coaster rides around the world, or the local public? To anyone who gets a headache from their "high quality" rides.

That's certainly possible. Personally, I'd rather see parks with budgetary concerns build actual good rides with that money, like maybe GCII or GG woodies. That makes more sense to me than investing millions in bad steel. High quality Vekoma ain't. Bah! They make good Woodies themselves, besides there rides tend to take little space and most parks dont have much space while woodies do take a bit of space (And some parks dont like woodies, dont know why ) But I do agree with you, Build more GG woodies GCII twisters don't take up all that much room. Look at the relative small footprints of Kentucky Rumbler and Thunderhead. Those are both solid rides. Do you think Beech Bend would have gotten any attention this year had they just haphazardly threw a boomerang into the corner? Now they have the best coaster in the state. I personally just don't see what parks gain from installing bad rides. Or, what about the Avalanche at Timber Falls? That's in my top 10, and they jammed it in around a mini golf course! I think it might be the maintenance that turns parks off to woodies. It's actually a lot of work, and very few places do it well. Gravity Group has a nice start. I hope they can get a bunch more rides installed soon.

My gf and I are going to get there around 4 P.M. or so, and stay for at least part of Fear Fest, depending on how cold we get. I'd be totally down for meeting up.

That's certainly possible. Personally, I'd rather see parks with budgetary concerns build actual good rides with that money, like maybe GCII or GG woodies. That makes more sense to me than investing millions in bad steel. High quality Vekoma ain't.

But, this isn't a merger, yet. It's a cooperative agreement for the U.S. market only. The best part of the press release is: So, now making the same POS head-bashing boomerang over and over again is "innovative" and "high quality". Cute.

Life expectancy is still something like that in many parts of the world. If you lived 10,000 years ago, life expectancy was something like 24 years.

Nobody gets out alive.

It's undeniable that the human population cannot grow indefinitely. The question is at what point do we reach the carrying capacity of the Earth. Technological advances would possibly augment this a bit, but there is still a breaking point. The WWF seems to think we're already over it.

Binaural beats don't work that way. You can't play them as ambient noise through speakers. They only work through stereo headphones. The technology works by playing tones of slightly different frequencies in each each ear. The brain resonates to the beat frequency, which is equal to the difference between the two individual frequencies. If you wanted to equip everyone in the house with headphones, you might be able to pull it off, but it takes a few minutes for it to work anyway. I have a lot of experience using this technology, but zero experience making binaural beats. It's a complicated process to make ones that actually work well. A company called Centerpointe is probably the leader in this field.

That's an excellent book. Traver was a character who was every bit as interesting as the crazy rides he built. I wish I could find a copy for a reasonable price. The current price on Amazon Marketplace is $100, which is too steep for me. I'm not that nerdy, yet. Yea, I had to pay 75 for mine. But its in absolute Mint condition so it was worth it. It seems to be reselling for almost double that consistantly. I'm not too much of a coaster history nerd. I do really enjoy looking at the old amusement park photos though. I love seeing pictures of people in suits riding coasters. It is such a shame that not a single Traver coaster exists today.

That's an excellent book. Traver was a character who was every bit as interesting as the crazy rides he built. I wish I could find a copy for a reasonable price. The current price on Amazon Marketplace is $100, which is too steep for me. I'm not that nerdy, yet.

Because it was a great ride for its day. It was considered the best ride at Riverview. Some excellent coasters were built in the early 20th century, including this and the Crystal Beach Cyclone. Most of these rides have been lost to time. Consequently, I'm pretty excited about riding the Flying Turns at Knoebels, whenever they get around to finishing it.

Huh? That's where the fun comes in! I'm not Christian either. I also cannot wait for the Creation Museum to open up here next year. http://www.answersingenesis.org/museum/ Florida might have IoA and WDW. But, do they have a museum featuring dinosaurs living alongside humans?

These hell houses sound absolutely awesome. I want to go to one now! This reminds me of this drive-in movie theatre my friends and I used to haunt. It was called "The Free Christian Drive-In" in Columbus, Ohio. We'd get hammered watching movies about people burning in hell and what not. So fun! I also love reading Jack Chick tracts. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1032/1032_01.asp?wpc=1032_01.asp&wpp=a "But spells don't work on me, Betsy." "Why not?" "Because Jesus protects me."

The best coaster at my home park, PKI, is The Racer. It's not in my top 10, and it doesn't really hold a candle to what you'd find in Indiana. But, it's really the only coaster at PKI with any airtime. It never has a wait, and is fun to ride over and over. Also, I remember the Racer when it was actually a great coaster, back before they let it fall to pieces and when it had no crappy seat belts or adjusting lapbars. The back seat gave stand-up, hold-on-for-dear-life airtime on the return run.

In my experience, most theme park food is crap, overpriced and bad. I usually eat right before we go, which minimizes the amount of theme park food that I have to buy. Dippin' Dots and funnel cake just doesn't do it for me personally.

I think he was just crushing your head, like in the old Kids in the Hall skit.

That Press Release is great! Tricky language there. Is this how they're going to present themselves now? The largest *regional* theme park operator. Sell a few more parks and they're going to be "the world's second largest regional theme park operator". Cedar Point? Do we not even know the names of our competitors? Maybe that extra $55 is why Cedar Fair is solidly in the black, and paying dividends. This is as opposed to having debt at 2x your annual revenue, and an ingenius plan to get out of debt by selling off your prime assets. The free parking is a nice perk though. That's a welcome change.

There is an extremely slight safety benefit to running one train. If the train should roll back down the lift hill, as Lisebergbanan did this year, there won't be a collision between the two trains. This, of course, isn't reason enough to run one train, because this sort of failure is extremely rare. Also, the chance of any other collisions, perhaps due to a train valleying and the computer failing to stop another train would be eliminated. Nobody has mentioned the parks that don't even have more than one train on their main ride. *cough* *cough* Hades *cough* *cough* I give Timber Falls a free pass on this with Avalanche. They're just a mini golf course with a coaster. They don't pass themselves off as being the "biggest" park in the Dells.

I don't think so. You can bring hundreds of people, and they include refreshments and what not. They also have to have a fair amount of staff to operate the rides and games. Also, there's not exactly a ton of similar places in the area. Your other option would be to rent PKI, which only Fortune 500 type firms could swing.

I rode Python for the first time ever last Thursday at Howl-o-Scream. It's such a popular coaster that we had the entire train to ourselves! Why would anyone want to save that ride, other than for nostalgic value? It's not even remotely good.

Those pictures came out well. I think the Tornado would be a lot better without the seatbelts. I got almost no airtime in the back seat, because the op tightened my belt a good bit. Stricker's isn't too bad for what it is, a place to rent for company picnics. I believe my work paid something like $10,000 to rent Stricker's for a day. That doesn't seem too bad for what you get.

Ok dude. I won't call you dude. That would be like bogus, dude. That's true only if "most coaster enthusiasts" is some sort of obscure limie slang for "I". Now you have to bring that into it. It's obvious who is acting like a baby here, dude. Furthermore, I suggest that you actually learn how to spell, punctuate, and otherwise write coherently. There's nothing more pathetic than someone trying to argue on the Internet who can't even spell.

That's a good way to get your hand chopped off. What part of "keep your hands inside the car" did you not understand?

Eloquent! This sort of behavior is why woodies now have those worthless seatbelts and adjusting lapbars. Still, I find it hard to get self-righteous about this, as I've personally done some rather stupid things that nearly killed me. I imagine most of the people here have done the same. What concerns me about this is the woman's age. I wonder if she was drunk. A woman in her 30s should certainly know better than to pull this sort of stunt.