
la2lvtom
Members-
Posts
237 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by la2lvtom
-
Cedar Point (CP) Discussion Thread
la2lvtom replied to robbalvey's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Saw these today at Steel Vengeance, dont know if they are new or old but that pallet was not there yesterday. Also as we were leaving today driving on the outer road from hotel Breakers at around 2:15 there were a bunch of work trucks outside of Steel Vengeance by the lift hill and i saw 5 people, 3 with faded dayglo green Rocky Mountain shirts and the other 2 had blue Cedar Point shirts. Hopefully this means 3 train operation for the holiday weekend. -
Glad to hear it's as easy as turning on my phone, that makes it convenient for a non technology person like me. I have noticed that since I finally paid for ExpressVPN it keeps turning itself off and on but I will play with it to figure it out, I still have 5 days to figure it out. Thanx for the info.
-
I just signed up with ExpressVPN for my trip to China next week and the only problem is they really do not say how to use it. To those of you who use one when traveling my question is when I get off the plane in China do I just turn on the phone and the VPN and that is it or do I need to buy a China Mobile SIM card like usual? And I guess the second part to that question would be do I need to change my phones setting to GSM or leave it on America's setting. Thank you in advance for any help.
-
New Roller Coasters in the RAW Blu-Ray Poll
la2lvtom replied to robbalvey's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Robb, for some reason I cannot vote above but I definitely WOULD be interested in a Roller coasters in the Raw HD Blu Ray. I am a fan of physical media and already have volumes 1 through 5. So put me down as a yes. -
Robb & Elissa in Asia - 2016!
la2lvtom replied to robbalvey's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Great trip report so far, you are making me miss the park so much. The crowds were crazy while you were there, I went on a Saturday during a typhoon and the crowds were still really bad... 90 minutes for both Soarin' and the rapids ride, 60 minutes for seven dwarves mine train and ropes course although Tron and Pirates were walk on all day. For me the standouts were of course Pirates (in my opinion the best dark ride ever created) and Tron, Buzz lightyear has super large and easy targets so I really liked that and Peter Pan with the new animatronics being used. Overall a really nice park that I would say is a 2 day park (mostly due to the crowds) and I can't wait to go back. My wife and I have a house in Guangzhou so I understand all you had to say about the difference in culture there is. My first couple of times in China were definitely an eye opener but now I have gotten used to it (scary to actually say that). For me the biggest issue I deal with is trying not to get upset with situations around me. there are many times I want to step in when I see things like men treating women like crap and when people get loud over little situations but I have to step back since I am a foreigner in their country on a spouse VISA and I don't feel like disappearing in a Chinese prison, don't get me wrong I'd say 98% of the situations I am in are great and the citizens are extremely friendly but that small amount really upsets me. Now if someone tries to get mouthy with my wife I do step in (I'm 6 foot and 275 so the situation disappears when I do step in). Since I am sort of a citizen of China I will also apologize for the Chinese people but as you know with the small percentage of bad Chinese there is a large percentage of great Chinese citizens. Looking forward to more trip reports especially Hong Kong Disneyland which is my home Disney park, Chimelong Paradise is technically my home park. -
How much do you use Twitter?
la2lvtom replied to robbalvey's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
I have never signed up for Twitter and have no desire to. I use 3 social media platforms... Instagram, Facebook and WeChat -
Lewa Happy World Discussion Thread
la2lvtom replied to gerstlaueringvar's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
How do I find the operating calendar? Also the link to the onsite hotels. -
Lewa Happy World Discussion Thread
la2lvtom replied to gerstlaueringvar's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
Does anyone know the web address of this park? Looking for a new park to visit when I go back to China in January and this park looks like it might be worth the visit. -
Most Anticipated Coasters For 2016
la2lvtom replied to I305forever's topic in Theme Parks, Roller Coasters, & Donkeys!
For me there is 4 I'm looking forward to in 2016, first and foremost would be Storm Rider at Kentucky Kingdom. After riding Medusa Steel Coaster in Mexico and it becoming my favorite RMC hybrid I see a lot of the same with Storm Rider plus that inverting first drop is simply AMAZING. I think next would be Lightning Rod at Dollywood, it looks like a great layout that will use the surrounding terrain to its advantage. With Tatsu at Magic Mountain being in my top 5 steel coasters I am really excited about Flying Dinasaur at Universal Studios Japan, taller longer and faster than Tatsu has me really excited. My sleeper pick would be the new Ghost Rider at Knotts Berry Farm, I think that GCI will make this coaster great again and looking at pictures of the rebuild they are making the right adjustments to the new track and support structure to make this coaster scream again. -
How in the world are you not a fan of Twisted Colossus? What is not to like about it? Don't get me wrong, it is a good coaster but of the 5 conversions they have performed I have it ranked fourth. I didn't find the trick track at the beginning all that spectacular and just as the coaster gains any momentum you are already at the second lift hill but I fault the original structure and not RMC for that. Plus the day I was there I hardly ever saw it racing (yet I blame Six Flags ride ops more than anything) so the high five element is not as exciting if you aren't really... you know... high fiving. I was a fan of the original Colossus but unfortunately Six Flags maintenance really let the coaster go and at the end there it was really un-rideable so the transformation was needed. If given a choice, though, I would prefer Medusa steel coaster or Wicked Cyclone over Twisted colossus but they are great due to the existing structure that RMC had to work with.
-
Screamin' Swing is an upcharge attraction, I visit Knotts every couple of months and I have only seen it running with people on it a handful of times (although I am there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I can't speak for it on the Weekends) so I am guessing it is a money losing attraction. Including it as general admission seems unfeasible since it is only an 8 seat model of the ride the wait at times could be crazy long if was included.
-
I'm really hoping for RMC topper track and keep the layout as it is because it is a great layout plus new RMC trains (I am not really a fan of Magic Mountains' Twisted Colossus redo but I absolutely love the trains, very comfortable). My bigger wish is this makeover is so successful that they do the same for Mean Streak and return that coaster back to when it first opened.
-
Official RCT3 Help Thread
la2lvtom replied to mcjaco's topic in Roller Coaster Games, Models, and Other Randomness
No I didn't perform a reinstall but I did run a virus scan using Malwarebytes and it did find 870 "threats". Once I removed them all I have had no issues with the program. Apparently downloading from Steam I caught a bunch of viruses, wish I had purchased a hard copy of the program. -
Official RCT3 Help Thread
la2lvtom replied to mcjaco's topic in Roller Coaster Games, Models, and Other Randomness
I haven't read through all 64 pages of this post so if this has been answered already I apologize. I just purchased RCT 3 a few weeks ago off of Steam and I don't know if it's because of their servers or because I am using Windows 8.1 but the game keeps freezing to the point where I need to do a hard reset on my laptop to unfreeze the computer. Anyone have any ideas why this is always happening? -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Glad you enjoyed the trip report. I never realized how much I really did until I created this TR. I definitely had a blast in Japan and China. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Yeah, it definitely was bizarre to say the least but at least they spent money on adding 2 new attractions so I am happy for that. Looks like Chimelong is feeling the pressure of all the new parks coming to China and they are spending money to stay the premier park in the region. Posting these pictures has really made me miss China and I really look forward to my next trip back there. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Well, there you go my entire trip to Japan and China and boy has this trip report brought back so many memories. I realized while posting this report that I visited so many parks (9 to be exact) during my trip that it took me until now to appreciate everything I did on my trip. I hope everyone has enjoyed the report and if it has inspired at least 1 person to visit Southern China then I will say all the effort was worth it. My next planned visit to Guangzhou will be to finally bring my wife to America and she can finally experience all the fun that American parks have to offer. I want to thank everyone who took time out of their schedule to look at my report and I hope to have many more trip reports to present to you. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
-
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
There is a vague story that it follows but towards the middle it kind of gets weird. The first scene you encounter is the said troll then as you enter the different show scenes he appears so you are kinda following him but when you get towards the final third it feels like the scenes are just thrown in. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
I will say the Forest Temple is unique but when you exit you are left wondering what you just experienced. Alien Encounter is a nice "dark ride" addition to the parks lineup, I think you guys will enjoy it on the next TPR China trip. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
The rest of the pics from Chimelong Paradise... The first haunt opened at 2pm and it was Terror Visions 3D, I have never been in a 3D haunt maze before and boy was this thing crazy. I don't know how they achieve the 3D effect because I would take off the glasses and it was just fluorescent paint thrown on the walls but with the glasses on you couldn't tell real from a simple effect, this maze was a lot of fun. Into the clowns mouth we go to experience the scary clowns. A Sombrero flat ride. See, China doesn't just plagiarize Disney characters they plagiarize Warner Brothers characters also. The bumper cars were quite popular, there was a 25 minute wait. Yet another theme park first for me, I have never seen them stop any bumper car ride so the ride ops could sweep the floor. A lot of theme park firsts for me on this trip. A large half pipe coaster is found at Chimelong Paradise. This coaster is named Half Pipe oh the uniqueness. Lily and I riding brooms. A photo spot as well as part of the Halloween decorations. Around 5pm they started opening the Halloween themed booths at the park. I told our daughter that she could get her face painted as anything she wanted and she chose a cat, of course Lily was having a grand time making faces behind her back... BUSTED... Tea cups, or should I say tea kettles. One of the costumed characters that were roaming around. I think she was going for and elfin, maybe? Confession time, this woman was gorgeous so I made Lily get in the picture with me so it would not seem awkward. I really don't know what theme she was going with but it is China so an A for effort. For some reason the Shoot The Chute splashdown ride had the longest line of all attractions today, we waited over an hour for this ride because they were only running one boat. We got in line while the sun was out and finally rode it after dark. Some of the scareacters doing a performance, they pulled "random" people out of the crowd and sat them in the electric chair We had dinner at one of the restaurants serving Halloween themed food, this led to all of us having a competition on who could take the coolestt picture of the Chinese Coke logo. I think my submission was the best. Halloween inspired candles on the table. This is about how busy the park was during the haunt event. The lighting package on the 10 inversion coaster is really nice. Halloween decorations in the trees all lit up. The entrance to the Terror Train haunt, a zombie shooting ride. Basically it is a tractor that pulls 3 cars that have guns mounted on the edges and you shoot at live zombies, It was not very well executed though. Here is Lily with one of the guns. Me with the Grim Reaper. Haunted Valley was a really good maze through a path in the forest. good set pieces and lots of scares. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Here is video I shot of 10 Inversion Coaster. [youtu_be] [/youtu_be] -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Well it has been a month and a half since I have returned from my trip and I really should get to the end of this report especially since everyone is posting Christmas related pics and I still have Halloween pics here, LOL. The FINAL park I visited is also the park I claim as my "home park" (I refuse to claim Adventuredome as my home park) and that is Chimelong Paradise in Guangzhou. My wife and daughter experienced their first Halloween when I took them 2 years ago to Chimelong Paradise so I wanted to go back for Halloween because they had a great time so me, Lily and Susan (my daughter) and a couple of Susan's friends packed up our backpacks and headed to the Chimelong for the day. I experienced another theme park first here, I tried to buy the express passes so we would not wait in line at the rides but they refused to sell them to me because they said the park was empty, I was getting mad because they would not sell them to me so I finally gave up and just went into the park and they were correct the park was empty, the longest line we encountered was 15 minutes for the launched motorbike coaster, which I say kudos to them for not being greedy and selling the express passes when they were not necessary (hear that Cedar Fair and Six Flags). I wound up taking the 500 yuan I saved and purchased the haunt express band for 400 yuan (for the haunts the express pass was really needed). When we went 2 years ago they had a couple of scareacters roaming around, one haunted house and a 4D movie for Halloween and it was all contained in the area around the 4D theater but this year their haunt really blew up and encompasses the entire park. There are now 8 haunted houses/mazes, a 4D movie based on Frankenstein, scareacters throughout the park, some of the restaurants offer Halloween themed food after 6pm and many Halloween themed gifts. My impression on the experience as whole... POSITIVE : the haunts were really good, money was spent on the set pieces and costumes and the scares were plenty. I would definitely put the haunts on par with what was offered at Universal Studios Japan. For a country that really does not celebrate the Halloween holiday Chimelong Paradise really went over the top with their offerings which really will not draw in too many locals to celebrate the holiday. NEGATIVE : they have no line flow control inside the haunts, with the exception of the Terror Visions 3D maze all the rest of the mazes people would just stop and take pictures of all the set pieces which created a real bad bottleneck towards the end of the mazes to the point of in 2 of the mazes the scareacters in the last quarter of the mazes were just standing around posing for pictures because it was useless for them to try to scare people because everyone was just stopped, they need employees inside the mazes to keep traffic flowing so they can serve up the scares. Also the Terror Tram (shooting zombies from a tram) was way too short, literally 45 seconds long, the wait was over an hour, I believe this was the first year they tried this but they need to find a bigger area for this attraction or make it a walk through like Universal Japan did with Biohazzard. My last complaint was the roaming scareacters were not scaring people they were just walking around taking pictures with people, when we went 2 years ago they were chasing people around (it was funny watching one chase my daughter all the way into a gift shop) but this time no such scares. Now on to the pics... To get to the park you take the Guangzhou Metro line 3 and exit the train at the Hanxi Changlong station. Anyone that has been to this park before be aware that the old subway exit "B" is no more, now you must exit at the "A" exit which is across the street and take the pedestrian bridge over to the Chimelong resort where you catch the resort bus to get where you need to go. Here are the ticket prices for Chimelong Paradise, they recently had a price increase of 30 yuan (about $5 USD) so be prepared to pay just a little more on your next visit. Here is the park map so you will have a reference of how the park is laid out. Like Universal Japan the haunt map was only available on the Chinese map and not the English map. The rear entrance to the park where you encounter the B&M dive coaster in all its glory. And here is Dive Coaster (really that's the name of the ride) which is a standard 200ft dive coaster with added bonus helix. Walking through the entry plaza you are greeted by the Chimelong mascots wearing Halloween costumes. The one in white kept rubbing my belly, guess she thought it would bring her good luck. Some of the Halloween decorations and roaming stilt walkers. More Halloween decorations in the entry plaza. Here is the Flying Horse family coaster, a Mack custom Youngster coaster. I have to admit this coaster is pretty forceful around the helix. Over by the 4D theater they have 2 new attractions. The first is Forest Temple which is a walk through attraction (later transformed into a haunt), from what I could make out it there is a troll that takes us deep down into a temple where we encounter a talking tree, giant ants, satan (???) and a dragon. It made no sense to me but the set pieces were really cool. Giant vines on a building= spooky It has a large que line, guess they expect large crowds but not this day because the park was empty. The talking tree, this animatronic was really good. wonder who they got to build this. I have never seen this before and found it really cool, it is a maze room but the walls are actually curtains of water. Funny how I found something so simple so fun. Here is the Dragon animatronic. The other new attraction at Chimelong Paradise is Alien Attack which the best way to explain it is a motion simulator surrounded by a giant screen (think King Kong 360 at Universal Studios Hollywood) but you are attacked by an Alien family because their kids, like most kids, are mischievous. Me with the giant protection robot outside the attraction. Umm... Honey... I don't think you are allowed to grab him there... The que line is rather large with many artifacts to look at. During the haunt at night this que was pretty full but this is a high capacity ride so it moved pretty good. The pre show where you learn about time travel technology and also learn about the protector robots that will accompany us on our trip to the future. Here is the actual ride vehicle/motion simulator surrounded by the giant 360 degree screen. This was really a good ride and a lot of fun. The show building is actually quite large. A true HUSS Giant Frisbee. I really hate this ride but Lily loves it and since she went on Dive Coaster for the first time with me this visit I felt I owed her and rode this. I have never been so happy to be on solid ground before in my life as I was when this ride was over. The Sky Drop is a Zamperla model drop tower. This is a rather weak ride in this parks lineup and it would be nice to see this drop tower removed and replaced with a proper drop tower ride from SS Worldwide or Intamin. This is Skater (but the ride vehicle was a boat), a compact Zamperla Disc-O This large tent contains 2 of the parks haunts, The Haunted Mansion and the Gothic Haunted House. If you read my negatives I wrote at the beginning these 2 haunts were the worst example of what I wrote about. Here is the Gateway To the Undead haunt, it was based on zombies in a toxic plant. The set pieces were good but also suffered from what I wrote in the negative section. Motorbike coaster is a launced coaster where you ride motorcycles. It is a fun ride with a few pops of airtime and 2 helixes. Waiting for the launch. Into the first bunny hop hill at 50 MPH. They had a Top Spin but it is now being removed so I wonder what new attraction they will be getting. One of my favorite steel coasters the 10 Inversion Coaster (the ride names are not very original in China). This is an Intamin coaster with 10 inversions. Just in case you were curious what Chinese people riding a coaster looks like. Just in case you were curious what Chinese people upside down on a coaster looked like. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
If you look at the top center of the spider walk picture that is the staircase that wraps around the "hub" of the Canton Tower. Looking straight up like that it really is intimidating. I am glad you enjoy the trip report, I am trying to include as much information as possible with each picture and throw in some relevant videos that pertain to the subject. I intentionally threw in information on how to get to each park by the Metro just in case someone who is reading this finds themselves in Guangzhou and wants to visit some small parks while they are there. -
Photo TR: Japan and southern China
la2lvtom replied to la2lvtom's topic in Photo Trip Report Archive
Here is a video from a previous visit to the park. I am riding the flying squirrel coaster and at the end you will see people waiting on the platform, they were my entourage that day. Every time I go to this park random people start following me around and I think it is because this park is so far out that not too many foreigners come here so the locals are excited to see one. Every visit with the exception of this one I attract followers at the park. It's actually really fun to feel important for a little bit. [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]