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So Candymonium can operate in lower temperatures because of these bogie heaters: At night they give a nice glow: These are the first in the US, no?

I think I know why Phoenix has been down. I was at the park yesterday for some Knoebels goodness, and I found these: In other news, the sky is falling. Actually, since Phoenix was still using one train operation, I couldn't get a good feel for how the new air gates affected capacity, but it obviously didn't help it. Twister's station on the other hand is still wide open.

I thought the color seemed wrong, and the location seemed wrong, but I completely forgot about BGW's new ride. That is obviously what we are looking at. Anyone know where Premier track is manufactured?

Screamscape is showing a picture of what is assumed to be Impulse track traveling on I-64 west of Richmond. Anyone know where Zierer track is manufactured? If it is imported, would the port of entry be Norfolk? If that location is correct, it seems to be taking an odd route to Elysburg.

I was able to spend Monday and Tuesday at the park. I would be shocked if Mean Streak was torn down anytime soon. There is an awful lot of new lumber laying inside the midfield. I'm sure at the very least it will get some retracking during the off season. CF worked with GCI on Hurler at Carowinds last winter, so maybe they could be an option to re-profile parts of the course. It seams that SF is the only one having RMC do I-box conversions for the time being. But who knows, it's a crazy business. Maybe CF can see if another company can duplicate what RMC does, Mondial perhaps?

Spent the day at the park yesterday. First visit I've made there in over 11 years even though it's no further away for me than a couple of other parks. In that time, they have opened two used coasters, so there hasn't been a huge draw for me. Wait times ranged from 10-30 minutes for each of the coasters even in the middle of the afternoon. I noticed right away that the staff is MUCH friendlier than what I remember. Saw a lot of smiles, and staff was generally pleasant to interact with. Operations are still painfully slow, but whereas before the general employee attitude was, "I'll do my job when I'm good and ready" or even, "What are you doing in my park?" Now the attitude is more "Oh, It's ok, we're having fun!" This was definitely an improvement. And a lot of the park are downright decent looking! My only real complaint was the food at the Crazy Horse Saloon in Coyote Creek. I'm accustomed to various park food services shutting down when things slow down, but in the late afternoon we fell victim to this one long after it should have been closed. I ordered the Cuban sandwich as it sounded like a nice change from traditional park fare. It took 10 minutes to assemble an inedibly tough chicken sandwich. And this was even with the use of a microwave to reheat the meat! There was no line, and only one other couple eating in the whole place. It turns out that most of the wait was for the bacon(?) which had to come from the back. The sandwich turned out to have exactly one ingredient in common with a Cuban (bread, or in this case a hamburger bun). The rest of the family seemed happy enough with what they ordered and I wasn't about to wait for another sandwich, so I cut my losses and chucked it in the trash. Oh, and the girl who made my sandwich was friendly, so I rewarded her by not even bringing it up. So back to the good stuff. The new Mardi Gras section is pretty nice, and the Ragin' Cajun is a great fit for the park. I personally think that SFA made the right choice in not hiding it behind a facade here. The queue might look small, but with the through-put being so low, it's plenty large. When people realize how slow the line moves, it becomes self limiting anyway. Aside from the aged Zydeco Zinger (was that a huge puddle of hydraulic fluid on the platform under the main arm?) the whole area looks alive with new life. One thing I saw that I thought was curious was in S:ROS gift shop. As you exit the ride into the gift shop there is a large Superman statue right next to the photo booth. A staff member was busy stocking a large number of Bizarro mugs on the base of the statue around Superman's feet. Is this normal to see these here? Or is this a hint at things to come? S:ROS is due for a repaint after all...

^ That last pic has a nice look at Anaconda's construction. Do you have a closeup of that area from the same time?

Are this year's "Education Days" the KI version of other parks' physics day? Have they been spreading it out like this in previous years? I would suppose that this would level out the crowds a little better than having just one day or weekend for such events. I have heard that some parks can be inordinately busy on their physics day.

pianojohn, I was at the park on Wednesday and followed the recommended coaster plan for the most part. I can tell you that it is indeed good advice. I made the mistake of jumping in a 3/4 full queue at Skyrush around noon thinking it didn't look bad. After a 50 minute wait, the line looked like it was down to about 15-20 minutes. That's what I get for not listening! I can tell you that the Skyrush queue is a great place for coaster lovers because in every direction you look you have some great coasters to watch spanning many decades of technology. The ride was exciting from the lift hill on, and certainly aggressive, but I don't think that it makes my top 10. At HP, I actually prefer Great Bear and Fahrenheit. I'll forgo a conclusion until I get 6 or 8 rides on Skyrush. To me the travesty of Skyrush is the station. The poor ride ops are overwhelmed with trying to get all of the riders off of the train and out of the station while getting new riders onto the train. I rode in the next to last row and was stuck in the crowd slowly shuffling down the narrow aisle while eager riders were pushing through us trying to get to their seat. Fortunately this ride is in central PA; a station like this at SFGA or SFA would cause daily knife fights.

The one stat that is glaringly omitted is the height of the first drop. Watching the point of view, it looks like the first drop goes into a trench. Are we looking at the biggest drop on a non-launched coaster? That could give a nice record to advertise next spring.

It looks like I'm seeing an expanded color palate as well. What format was the original source in for most of these recordings?

That would be just as great. For this, I would buy the set!

I cast my vote for yes, becuase I'm sure that I would buy at least one of them. The quality difference is pretty evident in the stills you posted. I really enjoy Raw-HD1 very much, and look forward to Raw-HD2 whenever that may come about. I appreciate your value of quality over quantity. That being said, one thing that may just convince me to buy the whole set would be a 'bonus track' of new HD footage. Rather than a psuedo-HD Blu-ray release with lots of SD filler (an idea I'm not fond of), I think a coaster or two on each 'remastered' disc in true HD would be an exciting teaser and would further whet our appetite for Raw-HD2. And I can't imagine anyone would be turned off if these HD tracks were eventually repeated on HD2.

I ordered the new Blu-Ray Roller Coasters in the Raw and received a copy that will not load in any machine that I have tried. The disc does not appear to be damaged, so I'm thinking I just received a glitched disc. I could not find anywhere in the TPR store that addresses this, or any contact info either, so I'm posting the question here: What is the process for getting a good disc?

I seem to have received a defective copy. I have tried it on mulitiple brands of bluray players and the disc will not load. Any idea how I can get a replacement copy? The TPR store site does not have any links that I can find that address this sort of thing. And I tried emailing robbalvey@themeparkreview.com last week, but have not received a reply. I can't wait to sample this HD goodness. Any thoughts?

Puzzle Complete

I now present to you the final piece: Anybody have any idea just what those boxes are on the straight track?

Ok, using google maps, the picture from the hotel window is definately mirrored horizontally and was taken from the building on the east corner of Huntington Avenue and Harcourt Street in Boston (see red pin below). It is the Marriott Boston - Copley Place. It has 39 floors and is 382' tall. That info and $41 will get us valet parking for a day there. If height is a factor here, we could judge from the Colonnade Residences tower (in the foreground with the blacked-out top floor) that the photo was taken from around 230-250 feet. The Colonnade is 20 stories. For now that's all I can find from those two blogspot pictures.

You are both right. The domed building is the Christian Science Center, but the tall building in the center of the frame turns out to be their administration building. A little searching shows that it is 370' tall. I can't imagine that height would be relevant to the new coaster, as someone somewhere suggested. However, the two different angles that the pictures are rotated might tell us something about the slope of the lift or drop. Any more straws to grasp at?

So the new blogspot picture includes the text: no communication to home And the file name is 'ncth.jpg' Nothing to write home about? Has anyone identified these buildings?