ginzo

And Movie Park Germany has much, much better food than a CF park. That was perhaps the best park meal we got in Europe.

I was actually talking more about the point where Windows 95 first came out. It was a god awful product, especially in the dreaded first release of Win95. Windows never really did what it was supposed to until about 5 years later. The market COULD have gone Mac. However, Microsoft won through superior marketing, excellent developer relations, and the much lower cost of PCs. It wasn't their product quality that carried them so much as their business skill. And takes me back to my original point about CF. They're excellent at business. They've expanded successfully without drowning in debt and while still paying a nice dividend. However, their parks don't really measure up in quality to countless other operators. And I think this is in no small part due to how tight fisted they are with money.

I agree that CF is a a well run business. But just because you run your business well does not necessarily mean that your product is great. Microsoft is one of the best corporate success stories in history. They've made profits margins that would make any of these theme park CEOs cry. And they manage their wealth with absolute efficiency. But they built this enterprise on software that was very crappy at times and often released long before it was ready for market.

Lucy's tug boat? That seems like a reach. Most of CF's recent adds have been big coasters and "balanced" isn't really a good way to describe most of their parks. Unless we're talking about two completely different things, I suppose. When I think of a balanced park, I think of parks like BGE, Dollywood, Europa, etc. Parks that combine good rides, aesthetics, decent food, and a reasonable amount of non-thrill ride things to do. CF flat out fails in all of these categories, except rides.

Is this a joke? What does CF do besides add coasters to their parks? Doesn't sound like balance to me when all they do is rip out stuff to put in more coasters. Oh, you must be talking about the cornhole game they installed at Geauga Lake.

I heard that about you, James. More seriously, let me know if this happens and I'll try to make it out. After having seen the Knex model at the front of the park, I'm more excited about this ride than I thought I was going to be.

Rock on! Thanks for the update.

Get a rental car. They're very affordable in SoCal. You might pay a bit for parking, but it'll be well worth it for the flexibility. The hotels with the best Disney transport are the ones right by Disney.

Oh boy, more scammers. The ghouls descend on the corpse of Astroland.

^My favorite are still the lingering Visionland fanboys. It's kind of amazing that a park that was open for only one season can even have fanboys. Being open for that short of time they can't fall back on the "but I grew up with this park, Zep was my first big coaster" stuff. Maybe we'll get some ex-HRP management trolls on here. It's not like they have anything else to do right now.

Yeah, my wife was addicted to the gingerbread lattes they used to sell around Christmas time, but this year they don't sell those. They're selling ginger snap lattes, which she apparently doesn't like. My take on Starbucks is that it's decent, better than most of the independent places with bumper stickers out front that say "Friends Don't Let Friends Drink Starbucks", but not spectacular. Anyone who has had coffee directly from Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, etc. can confirm this. In fact, I think I might hit up some of my friends right now so I have some of the good stuff over the holidays.

Escorts? I don't think BeatleBen would be willing to give up his escorts just to visit a park.

We already know the answer to this question: no.

Hell yes!!! I love big, fat, bald, dead German guys. They're so sexy. Jessica Alba ain't got a thing on this.

Amazon is selling copies of Wii Fit for $89.99. If you're interested, I suggest getting it RIGHT NOW before it sells out again. Liz just ordered a copy. Wii Fit is a seriously good deal considering that I used to pay $80/month to belong to a health club for just me. Not to mention any decent piece of home exercise equipment is going to run you $500 minimum.

Great work, Gary! I used to be a big fan of HBO's Deadwood show. There's a *lot* of potential with this theme and it's a nice spin off the standard generic old west theme.

I learned this past summer that it's a HUGE mistake to try and judge a European park by what you see in RCDB. Bobbejaanland didn't have very impressive looking coasters, but it nevertheless became one of my top 3 parks in Europe.

Maybe they're theming this thing to Barney the dinosaur! Man, all that purple sure is tacky looking. Ultimately, I don't care much though because I'll be quite happy if they fix the restraints and make the coaster run at its peak.

Assuming these numbers are accurate, the average acceleration on this launch is going to be very nice: 65.05 feet/sec^2 (2.02g) For comparison purposes: Xcelerator: 52.29 feet/sec^2 (1.62g) TTD: 44.00 feet/sec^2 (1.37g) Kingda Ka: 53.64 feet/sec^2 (1.67g) HyperSonic XLC: 65.19 feet/sec^2 (2.03g) Dodonpa: 87.10 feet/sec^2 (2.71g) All you engineering/physics nerds out there please feel free to tear me apart if I've done this wrong. But I think this is going to be one hell of a launch for a little Eurofighter coaster. Update: fixed my borked numbers.

Yep, it certainly beats the "let it rot" method. Poor Six Flags can't win. First they're criticized for neglecting their existing assets. Now they're criticized for not neglecting their rides. I'm really happy about the work they're doing to SFNE SROS because I DESPISE the restraints they've been using. Jamming a giant metal bar into my shins doesn't make me happy. But now that they're going to fix that I'm going to make it a priority to get out there next season. Also, Lake Compounce has apparently done some work to Boulder Dash, which will give me further incentive to travel out that way. So, yeah, I can't see how fixing up old rides is a bad thing at all.

As much as I like Schwarzkopf and monorails, I'm not sad to see this one go. It was like riding in a cramped oven. It was also really slow and only had one station so it didn't function as transport. It did look pretty cool though.

29% and half of the people that volunteered to take the survey, which is a self-selected group. The "proper" way to conduct is a survey is to randomly select people to participate in it. It's entirely possible that old people, like Jeff Johnson, are less likely to respond to an open survey like this.

You buy a ticket and if the numbers on your ticket match the numbers they draw you get rich!

^Don't forget leg warmers.

After consuming a few glasses of Merlot, I managed to submit my wood poll ballot. I had to use the grouping method, but I did come up with a top 10: 1) Expedition GeForce - Holiday Park (My favorite steel) 2) El Toro - Six Flags Great Adventure 3) Phoenix - Knoebels 4) Colossos - Heide Park 5) Ravine Flyer II - Waldameer 6) Avalanche - Timber Falls 7) Cornball Express - Indiana Beach 8) Raven - Holiday World 9) Kentucky Rumbler - Beech Bend 10) Thunderhead - Dollywood My bottom 4 were: 57) Son of Beast - Kings Island 58) GhostRider - Knott's Berry Farm 59) Hell Cat - Clementon Lake 60) Predator - Darien Lake I also ranked Bandit @ Movie Park Germany in my #20 group (highest group number for me) because selling on-ride videos of a coaster that rough is one of the funniest things ever. Watching the Lou & Steve C video on the bus in Europe was one of the highlights of the trip for me. It was like some bizarre modern coaster dork version of The Three Stooges. I could not stop laughing.