packfanlv

^Yeah I am thinking they did them that way to be more decorative since it is inside of the mall. They almost look like trees I guess. Perhaps the original plan was to paint them differently.

Thanks Rick. I really appreciate it!

Voting ends tonight for the contest to send me to India. Currently I am in 15th place, but others are gaining fast. They are sending 25 people, but voting isn't the only criteria, so all I can do is finish as high as possible! You can vote here. It only takes a few seconds! I thought I would finish off this last round of updates with Zorky's Planet in Bucharest, Romania. Zorky's Planet is located in a mall and is almost like an FEC. It has a few small flat rides, arcade games and then a coaster that actually hangs out over the bottom floor of the mall. The mall itself contains an ice skating rink, movie theaters and several other entertainment venues. Take a look and please vote. Voting ends at 1pm Eastern 10am Pacific tomorrow 1/15/2013. Thanks for the help! Welcome to the mall. This place rivals any high end mall in America. The central atrium has a full sized ice skating rink! And waterfalls. This place is seriously impressive. Here we are at Zorky's Planet. The coasters comes out of Zorky's and goes right over the mall. Another perspective. Zorky's is a pretty standard FEC. There are video games and other amusements. Here is one of the kiddy flats. More fun! These bumper cars actually looked pretty decent. I'll end with a few more shots of the coaster. It really is cool to be walking through a mall with this above you. In case you were wondering, riders get two full circuits! Coasterporn! I hope you enjoyed this brief PTR Now please vote! I truly appreciate it!

Should be just a few more weeks before we get to ride this baby! Thanks for the update John!

The voting in the contest to send me to Kerala, India ends soon. (See page 16 of this thread for info.) To keep this thread relevant and to thank you for the support, I am going to post some photos of a couple of rare Romanian parks in Bucharest. I love to hear feedback so post if you like this and I'll see if I can drudge up some other rare parks to post! We visited the rather drab former Communist capital of Bucharest in late March. Much of the city's historic buildings were destroyed by Nicolae Ceaușescu who was the country's communist leader for decades. He opted to destroy anything historical so he could build massive communist buildings that were designed to make the people feel small. Most travelers don't speak fondly of Bucharest because of the lack of history and because the city is full of UGLY Soviet style block apartment towers. We did enjoy our time in the city though and even found a couple of cool little parks. The first park I will post here is Parcul Tineretului. Like many parks in China and other areas of the world, this collection of rides is housed within a giant city park. Unlike most of those parks, it was really nice. A bonus for me was finding that there was a 2nd coaster not listed on RCDB! I love it when that happens. Now on to the photos. We will start with a typical Communist building. You do feel very small when standing underneath it. Here we are. Parcul Tineretului. There is a huge wall surrounding this area so they close it off from the rest of the park. It is actually very nice inside. They have a thing about painting characters on the side of everything! As you can see here. Here we have the first coaster. Montagne Russe. A typical Galaxi. It is very colorful. More painting! Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooo! POV! Please hold together. Tarzan! An overview of the park from the coaster. Random ride. More beautiful buildings with murals. More beautiful buildings with murals. Is this a second coaster? I love finding things not listed on RCDB. Of course the new coaster is full of character(s). In da station. "Dad. Do we really have to ride this?" Tire porn. For Larry if he so desires. We aren't the only crazy ones. Now look closely at this picture. The ride is running. Where is the ride op? If you see that group of men, he is in it. After he would start the ride, he would just walk away and go back to talking to his friends. It went around eight cycles if I remember correctly. After the ride stopped you would have to wait for him to take a leisurely stroll back to unlock the restraints. Gotta love Eastern Europe! Hi ho. Hi ho. The rest of the city park was great. I love how they have workout equipment in the park. We have seen this in many countries. I wonder why we don't have them here. Probably lawsuits I guess. Separated from the other rides is this ferris wheel. It sits on the top of a natural hill looking down on another section of the park. Random plaza and rockwork in the middle of the park. A really pretty place. They also have several large playground structures for the children. These were seasonally closed. There is a waterpark here as well. Of course with freezing temperatures, it was closed. The far side of the park houses a gigantic lake. It was very peaceful compared with the loud city surrounding it. Not everything has been updated or maintained. Another nice playground that has been recently renovated. I will leave you with a photo of a typical apartment block. Imagine a city with hundreds of these next to each other. On every street. On every block. Yep that is Bucharest! Did I earn your vote? I hope so. If not, then wait, because I will post photos of another small park in Bucharest in a few days. Thanks!

Now on to the coasters. I am not sure which ones are permanent and which ones travel, but RCDB only lists two as permanent rides. Here we go. Our first coaster of the day. Not much, but it will do. It has been a long cold European Winter without any coasters. First we must buy our pink soap like ticket. As you can see the coaster has great view of that circular black building. The view does get better though. An improved view. Look closely. BOOBIES! Coaster - Boobies - Food. Rinse. Repeat. Next up we have a spinning mouse. Not my favorite ride. It is a credit. Please don't hurt. Brains officially scrambled. Next we have this monstrosity. It is definitely one of the permanent rides and doesn't look to be maintained very well. That has never stopped us before and it won't stop us now! There is no turning back. I thought this thing could collapse at any moment. Mama get me off. Some more shots of the ride. ... Finally we have a very colorful Wacky Worm. No shame! That is a proud son right there. I am smiling inside. I promise. Pretty. See! I told you I am smiling. Because I am so mature. I'll leave you now with a few more pictures of Prague. A truly charming city. Thanks for reading this trip report. And don't forget to vote to send me to India. (Page 16 of this thread!)

I just want to thank everyone for the votes. Since Robb has been kind enough to allow for this, I thought I would give something back and really resurrect this thread. From January-April of last year my wife, son and I backpacked through Eastern & Central Europe. Since it was mostly during the winter, we didn't get a chance to visit many parks, but towards the end we hit up a few. Today I am going to post some pictures of Lunapark in Prague, Czech Republic. It doesn't seem there has been very much posted to TPR about this park. Lunapark is housed in a large city park that is home to several cultural buildings and other venues. You pay separately for every ride in the park. There are definitely some permanent rides, but many of the rides appear to be temporarily housed here when they are not being used at carnivals. In this first part I will post pictures of the park and the flats. Then in a second post I will show you the coasters! Enjoy and don't forget to vote to send me to India! (Page 16) If you haven't seen it before, look up Prague. It is a magical old city. Prague is one of the few cities in this area of Europe that was not bombed heavily during World War II. To get to Lunapark you cross the river from the main part of the city. Lunapark sits in the middle of a giant city park with a large exhibition center in the front. A view down the Midway. The park is really just a collection of random carnival rides. Very colorful. Into the mouth of the serpent. My MIL made the trip with us. This boat was amusing. Lots of rides stacked in a small space! Heeeeey Sexy Lady! Langose = Fried Dough. YUM! A baby Starflyer. This was some sort of a dark ride. This ride was fitting for a cold April day in Prague. A bad picture, but now you feel better about your photography. Best. Ride. Evar! A look down one of the midways. One of the theater buildings in the park. Eating fatty foods. One of the best parts of both traveling and visiting amusement parks. This is the back side of the main exhibition center. They had a Bodies exhibit going on at this time. Look closely. Do you see it? Do you? That is right. Czech World of Color!

Awesome. Thanks for the support Robb!

I want the wait to be over! We haven't had a new coaster in our backyard for so long. I am getting really excited. A few months ago I made the decision that I was not going to visit the Adventuredome so that I will be surprised when I see El Loco for the first time. Hopefully they actually get this opened by the end of the month as promised.

I use Twitter somewhat, but most of my interactions are on Facebook. This is especially the case when it comes to theme park related stuff!

Hello Everyone! This thread is a few years old, but it still contains some awesome photos of lesser known parks in Asia and I thought I would bump it back up for a bit. The thread started during my family's around the world trip in 2007-2008. For 18 months we traveled all around the world and occasionally were able to hit up these local parks and post about them. Fast forward to several years later and we still travel quite extensively and I continue to write about it on my site Miles To Memories. The reason for this post is to ask for TPR's help. With Robb's permission I am resurrecting this thread to ask for your votes. I am in the running to be chosen to go to Kerala, India on a press tour. One of the criteria that the Kerala Department of Tourism will use to determine who they chose to bring, is a voting system. They are testing to see how strong each blogger's social media reach is. To vote, simply go to my Profile Page and click "Login with Facebook" to vote for me. The entire process is very simple and takes less than two minutes to complete. This does require you to verify your identity with Facebook to prevent illegal votes. (This contest is run by the Kerala Tourism Authority.) If you are interested in traveling the world for cheap, I would love for you to check out my website as well. Finally, this is an AWESOME thread. If you have never seen it before, I recommend you take a look at some of the smaller and wackier parks that we visited in Asia. I want to thank Robb & Elissa for allowing me to post this here and to thank TPR for the support. If I do get chosen for the trip I PROMISE to do everything in my power to get to some of the smaller parks in Kerala and post updates in this thread. Thanks again!

This is such great news. The old park was such a DUMP!

This park looks like a winner. I love how compact and close to the building the Intamin coaster is.

I sent you a PM with all of my contact information if they are interested! Let me know!

I have one non-season pass holder ticket available for Saturday at SFMM. If anyone is interested let me know.