ginzo

Thanks for posting such an informative TR. I'm not familiar with German fairs at all and therefore learned a lot!

What? Laser Snake Horse ON FIRE not great?

I'd rather have another airtime hill.

In chronological order: Busch Gardens Europe (1999) Six Flags Great America (1999) Six Flags Great Adventure (2001) Europa Park (2002) Six Flags Over Georgia (2006) La Ronde (2006) Universal Studios Japan (2007) Canada's Wonderland (2008)

Eurosat was like 100x better than DLP Space Mountain. Eurosat may have been the best Space Mountain-type ride I've been on. That train FLIES!!!

Have you seen it in person?

We already had multiple Royal Cheese credits at that point, so we were fine with skipping out on that. At the Versailles McDonalds they have these little ordering kiosks where you plug in your order, pay with credit card, and then go pick your order up at the counter. It seriously ruled. I do regret missing out on a pizza burger credit, but I was pretty ill for most of Saturday and all of Sunday. I think I ate maybe 1,000 calories from Saturday through Wednesday.

Yeppers. And it was total carnage in there. I took one look at the huge mob of people waiting to get food and decided to go elsewhere.

How can you tell anything about the track work of a coaster that's not even built yet by a concept drawing?

No, I got scared and wouldn't ride it.

Dark woodie ride?

OMG! ERT on the Panther Coaster.

Aqua Terminator Trax at SFMM?

Aqua Trax?

Yeah, I'm mostly just irritated with myself for not having looked into the matter more carefully. Next time we go, I think I'm going to try to do this: http://www.fattirebiketoursparis.com/bikes/bike-tour/versailles-bike-tour.shtml

On the morning of Friday, June 20th we took the RER up to Versailles. Now I've seen a few fancy huts in my day, like the Biltmore in Asheville. Nothing in the US comes anywhere near the excesses of Versailles. The Biltmore isn't fit to be an outhouse at Versailles. And although I haven't been there yet, the same is most likely true of Hearst Castle. A dirt floor slave cabin when compared to this palace. Another view of fountain FAIL. If you're going to visit Versailles, be sure to check the schedule and go on a day when they are actually running the fountains. Fountain FAIL! It turns out that they only run the fountains on specific days. Versailles has several fountains, but on many days they don't run any of them. I can understand why they wouldn't run the fountains every day, but couldn't they at least run the big one directly behind the palace? This gives you a better idea of just how friggen' huge this place really is. More boobs. In the back of the palace. Please realize that the palace is so huge that this is only 1/3rd of the rear facade. You'd need one heck of a wide angle lens to capture all of it. Very nice stairs. The King's bed. Or is it the Queen's bed? Heck, I forget. I'm going to go with the King's bed. Liz in the Hall of Mirrors. I couldn't resist taking a crappy Myspace style mirror shot here. If you look to the left, you can see the mirrors for which this room is named. Remember that mirrors were not so commonplace when this room was built in the 17th century and therefore this spectacular room would have been all the more impressive. And this is the fabled Hall of Mirrors, which was my favorite room inside the palace because it's so big it didn't feel as crowded as the other rooms did. It was in this very room that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, ending World War I. Many historical figures, such as the economist John Maynard Keynes, thought that this treaty was too harsh on Germany and set the stage for World War II. However, this is controversial and still a subject of debate among history geeks. A closer view of one of the many busts of Julius Caesar. If I've got my emperor wrong, please let me know. The first of many school groups I would encounter on this trip. This is the entrance to the hall of mirrors. Notice the busts of Julius Caesar. The Sun King had no problems with comparing himself to some of the great figures of history. He seemed to have a particular fetish for Roman emperors as busts of them are littered throughout the palace. Though this could just be part of the recreation of Versailles. Most of what you see here is a recreation because the peasants looted and ransacked Versailles during the French Revolution. One of us will betray you. Because you can't just bolt your chandeliers onto the ceiling in a palace. More gaudy hallway statues. I gotta get some of these for my place. A peek out the window into the gardens of Versailles. The palace is just as famous for its gardens as it is for the palace itself. A close up of one of the many statues. It's not a royal hallway without a bunch of statues in it. Another view of the insanely opulent chapel. "The present chapel of the Palace of Versailles is the fifth in the history of the palace. These chapels evolved with the expansion of the château and formed the focal point of the daily life of the court during the Ancien Régime." We stayed in an apartment in this building for the pre-trip. The apartment was on the sixth floor and the elevator only carried one person at a time and no bags were allowed on the elevator. Didn't matter because it was a really good deal compared to most of Paris's shockingly expensive hotels. The building itself is a textbook example of a 19th century Haussmann style building. Napoléon himself gave the order to remake the medieval city of Paris in this architectural style.

I enjoyed the anecdote about your seat on the plane. WTF is wrong with people? Is the concept of seating assignments really that difficult to grasp?

Weird? It's only one of the coolest looking things Disney has ever built. If only it wasn't a total death machine of a ride.

Wes, that's awesome. You should see if Robb will sell that on a t-shirt. I'd buy it and wear it to KI opening day.

Well, they're probably going by the fact that this will be their largest investment in a ride to date.

I'd be shocked if they built a top 5 level coaster. I'm not expecting them to top GeForce. Though it should be much better than everything else they've got and I'm definitely getting a season pass for next season.

Bandit > Kings Island's new coaster

Yeah, but those rides all passed "the Robb test".

Just like not every girl gets to be as hot as Jessica Alba, not every park gets to be Europa Park.

Watch the video that Groteslurf posted. It's even more insane. One wrong move and they'd plummet down the mountainside to their doom.