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Although I'd love to see Disney's take on a more thrill-oriented park, you're probably not going to see that any time soon. California Adventure sorta went that way and that park has not done well. Besides, Orlando has two major coasters opening next year. You have very little to complain about.

As my coaster count gets bigger this gets progressively more difficult. I totally understand why the super high credit count people wouldn't want to do this. Anyway, I'll get some booze in me later on and try to at least get the woodie poll cranked out tonight.

So, have there been any bigger epic fails in industry history? $400 million flushed in a few months?

Yeah, it's really bizarre how they talk about "lack of funding for marketing" when it was their job to make sure they had money left in the budget to buy ads. Seriously, who builds a $400 million theme park and doesn't leave money over to properly promote it? Retards that don't deserve to be third shift managers at McDonald's. Plenty of smaller parks that could never afford to buy a B&M manage to buy a few billboards and TV spots.

6/10 = Awesome.

Why would it go to waste? If the park never opens again, chances are someone will be happy to take it off their hands in the fire sale.

They've already got a really cool Europe trip coming up: Scandinavia.

Lily Allen - Mr. Blue Sky (ELO Cover)

Rest assured that TPR trips are not filled with a bunch of spine surgeons, investment bankers, CEOs, and intellectual property attorneys. Basically, it's all just "regular" people who have travel as a high priority in their budgets. We've got teachers, engineers, a mailman, a guy who works for UPS, computer programmers, an academy award winning writer, etc. I work for a friggen phone company and I managed to go on the Europe trip this year with my wife. And, assuming I make it on, I'll be on the Scandi trip next year. When I bought my place, I opted to get a much smaller place than the bank would lend me money to buy. I drive an older car that I own. It's all about what prioritizing your budget for what you want most.

Yeah, my trip to SFGAdv last year was excellent. Gold Q-Bot worked flawlessly and got me all the El Toro and Nitro that I could handle. Enjoyed Medusa, Batman, Skull Mountain, and the parachute ride a lot as well. Operations were decent and all the coasters were operational for basically all of the day. There was one staple nazi on El Toro, but I worked around this by sitting on the other side of the train where the bar checker was much more lenient. The ride manager for El Toro that day was very friendly: he saw me wearing a Voyage shirt (dorktastic!) and started up a lengthy conversation with me. I can't think of any park with a better coaster selection than SFGAdv. The only real criticism I have of the place is the odd lack of flats. And there seems to be no immediate plans to correct this. Maybe we just got lucky, but we had an awesome day there and would love to go back.

Thanks for posting this! I can't begin to tell you how much nicer these look than the crappy state fairs in the US.

Yep, who wouldn't want to ride the dog fart coaster?

I think the decision to remove this surprises nobody. From what Erik was explaining to me on the Europe trip, there were some serious design problems with this ride. Fundamental stuff, like drop angles being wrong causing the coaster to grind where it should have coasted. I vote for calling this one "Eurobat".

For some reason this makes me want to buy a timeshare.

They didn't even make it a full season without filing for bankruptcy. That sounds like a fundamentally unworkable enterprise to me. As funny as this kind of is, it is a shame to see an actual themed park go under like this while the CF parking lot parks carry on in all their concrete glory.

I guess the Visionland fanboys were right after all about the park attracting guests from afar.

Yeah, I'm going to be surprised if Alton Towers and Nemesis aren't my favorite UK park and coaster respectively. I'd be more interested in Rat Ride than the Ultimate because I do like Schwarzkopf.

^Hmm, that Schwarzkopf does look interesting. I'll put Camelot on my list as a place to visit if I can squeeze it into the itinerary. Thanks!

^^I've actually heard that Six Flags Mexico makes a lot of money. It's not like labor is costly there and they apparently have managed to keep attendance up without putting in a bunch of costly additions. It's not like Mexico is overflowing with amusement parks. So, what SFM offers might be quite appealing to the locals who can't just hop in the car and make an easy drive to Cedar Point or Great Adventure. Speaking of Six Flags Mexico, has anyone here been there? And, if so, is their G-trained CCI as rough as I imagine it is?

If I ever get rich, I'm going to hire you to follow me around and yell at people who do stupid crap like that. There certainly would be no shortage of work for you.

That's the best way to identify a good dark ride: The little kids crying as they come off it.

But you'll have plenty of food to eat through your happy tube!

Splash battles are cool. They're the kind of attraction that's fun just to watch from the midway. The interactive nature of these is fun also. I think more interactive rides should be installed in parks to help lure video game addicts out off the couch. That being said, it seems like 2009 is going to be a rather "light" year for Six Flags. I hate to say it, but Cedar Fair probably has them whipped (Diamondback), but I guess it's necessary to have a few of these light years in order to not bankrupt the company. Here's to hoping this strategy finally pays off for Six Flags and they get back to a point where they can install some decent coasters again. I'm still waiting for that T-Express clone!

Do you have any sort of evidence to bolster your claim beyond "I just got this feeling"? Hahahaha. Awesome. I know exactly where this comes from.

Thanks for posting these artsy photos of my favorite coaster! I was there with TPR earlier this summer and EGF just kicked major ass.