ginzo

I was wondering about that. With some of the B&M hypers I've noticed drastic differences from row to row. Though I remember Goliath SFOG delivering in almost every seat and first thing in the morning. It's also possible that Diamondback ran a little bit better after it got warmed up. We're going back Friday for some more rides. That really irritated me as well. Opening day and a three hour wait only to have two sucky trims right in a row.

^It's like any other B&M splashdown. The riders do not get wet. And the splashdown pool is way below the midway. So, the spectators don't get wet either.

^As we were leaving, the line ended at the Chick-Fil-A, which is right at where you see the orange umbrellas on the middle right of that picture.

No, that's roughly where the Beast is. Diamondback does head towards the back of the park, but the front part of the ride is relatively close to the Eiffel Tower. The ride entrance is in an odd place, right next to the kiddie area. I don't think the online park map showed this very well at all. The capacity is good and there were no break downs that I know of. But the crew is not that great just yet and the crowd was immense. The line looked a lot shorter as we were leaving the park at roughly 2 PM. Also, remember that not only is this opening day but the park is closed to the public tomorrow.

The other coasters are not walk-on. It's not slammed, but they had an hour wait posted for the Beast.

A quick review from my phone: Great ride that will probably make the lower half of my top 10 for steel. Our total wait time was just over three hours. The crew is still a little green, which is understandable. The airtime is good, but not as good as Goliath or Behemoth. I also like Nitro more. The ride was very smooth in row 3, but we bumped into Craig (IggyAce) and he claimed that the very back vibrated. But it's still early in the day and not that hot. Overall this is the best ride in the park and perhaps the second best steel in Ohio (behind Maverick). I need to get more rides in, but not today because the queue is still back onto the midway by the Eiffel Tower. It'll be nice to see how LSHOF breaks in, but for now it didn't quite live up to the OMG BEST B&M EVER that I was hoping for. I also counted at least two trims, which definitely makes the second half weaker than the first. Thanks to Kings Island for the free t-shirt and actually opening their ride on opening day! Also, they managed the crowds reasonably well.

I'm in line right now and have been for the past hour. I really should have arrived earlier. The line ahead of us is probably 2-4 hours. It's hard to tell because it winds around back by Italian Job.

That still puts that estimate within ~3% of the actual figure. Not horrible for an educated guess. What I find interesting is how close Tokyo DisneySea is to Tokyo Disneyland when compared to the second gates in Paris and Anaheim. It just goes to show that you get what you pay for. I can't believe how poorly they're estimating Disney Studios Paris considering that 2008 was the first full year that Tower of Terror was open.

Fixed that for you.

I love this park. It might not look like much if you just look at it in RCDB, but boy is it awesome. Everything has kind of their own weird tinge added to it. I imagine that the King Kong ride fits in PERFECTLY at Bobbejaanland.

Quoted for truth. I think this HRP/FSMP discussion has been very much fun. It's like a long, drawn out train wreck. It's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year 'round. I mean basically ALL of us want this park to succeed. Who wants parks to fail? I hope they turn the place around into the kind of park I'd actually WANT to drive all the way to South Carolina to visit. Would I pay $40 for FSMP? Yes, of course. I paid about that much to visit crappy Marineland. But would I go out of my way to visit FSMP? In its current state, no. Obviously we're not all Walt Disneys or anything, but the smart money right now is on this ship not turning around without some bolder maneuvers being tried. Myrtle Beach has killed two parks recently and it could easily kill again!

^Are they Catholic?

That never stopped me from enjoying cheese.

I didn't want to get into this, but yes, exactly. Pathogens like viruses and bacteria are "microorganisms", which means that they'll go right through any bathing suit, even a Speedo, because they're much smaller than the little holes between the fibers of the bathing suit.

You forgot about the part where they spit in your food. Or worse.

^^^Yeah, that's a much better explanation than what I gave. Basically, if you're spending big bucks on an international flight, it's up to you to be smart about it. Like we're doing some hiking in Switzerland in early June before the Scandi trip. This is definitely non-peak season for hiking in the Alps, which means cheaper hotel rooms and all. But the trade off is that many of the trails will impassable because the snow hasn't fully melted yet.

I think I'm just a cynical bastard by nature and I pretty much expect these kinds of antics. I wouldn't have even asked for a parking refund. I would have charged it back with the credit card company. I try to charge everything I possibly can to give me this leverage. I do agree that they handled this situation very poorly, but they did make the obvious call overall. 100 guests barely justifies one coaster being open, much less 13. No rich parent company and a crippling mountain of debt.

Maybe Six Flags should try the Hersheypark approach of "promise less, charge less" for some of their parks earlier on in the season. That way they could just open some things and not be under as much pressure to get everything running by opening day. Though with a day with 100 guests even that approach is a huge money pit. Then pay very close attention and learn from someone else's mistake here. As a traveler it's your responsibility to research the place that you're going to. And when you travel in "shoulder season" one thing that is commonly known is that attractions can be more iffy with being open.

Did you actually ask for a refund at the parking booth? I'm not clear on that fact. You could try contacting the park with your complaint. It sounds like the turn out was extremely poor and they shut the place down so that they wouldn't lose their shirt by paying to staff an entire park for 20 car loads worth of people.

You know I've taken my Nikon DSLR on many rides and it has never seemed to suffer from this. Sure it's not drop-proof, but how great of pictures are you going to take when you're in a situation where you're likely to drop your camera? Also, my D40 wasn't particularly expensive and the stock lens would be fairly inexpensive to replace if you did manage to damage it. The underwater feature of the Olympus is pretty neat though.

Two whole minutes under water!

But they're not going for funky and amateurish. They're charging $40 and trying to do the Cedar Fair thing without an established following. Or a lot of rides or anything. They're doing a cheap knock off of a failed concept. What makes them think that people will be any more interested in this concept than they were last year? I think the haters are right. They need to think this through more if they aren't going to become the third straight failure in this amusement park Bermuda Triangle.

Yep, I'm still not interested in driving all the way to SC for this park.

Glad this is all coming together nicely for you, Shane. It looks like you picked a very nice location with those mountains in the background.