packfanlv

Great video as always! Thanks.

Thanks. My feelings about Fiesta Texas are about the same. I was really surprised with how beautiful the park is. I am enjoying the reports!

Thanks for the trip reports. I am enjoying them.

Happy Anniversary! I'm sure the results on Monday will be good. Positive thinking is the key.

^^Agreed. Mick Doohan's Motocoaster was such a huge disappointment. The only other coaster I have ridden of that type was at Chimelong Paradise in China and that was much better. So not only was it a fairly gentle type of ride, but it wasn't even a good version of it.

Thanks Big Mike. The variety on this thread is amazing! You never cease to entertain.

^Well said my friend. Well said!

^Thanks for adding the photos. St. Kilda just seemed a bit run down and perhaps in transition, but I am no expert and you probably know better than me, so I defer to you. BTW, this thread really exists to help add to the park index, so anyone who has photos please post them in this thread. Since I didn't take the photos with the idea of posting a TR, they aren't the best. The POV photo above is fantastic. Thanks everyone for adding to this thread!

This sounds similar to the Tomb Raider style maze that we saw in Melbourne last year. Kind of a haunt style maze with people jumping out, lots of fog and minimal lighting.

^Yah that is why they say continually operating. Either way a coaster that was built in 1912 is not something you run across every day.

I think this coaster looks awesome. While I didn't love their park in Beijing, I will agree that this company is building some great rides and along with Chimelong Paradise is taking the Chinese Theme Park to a whole other level. Shanghai is soon going to be a destination for enthusiasts with Happy Valley and the long rumored (but never announced) Shanghai Disneyland. For now all the people have is the fake version of It's A Small World and some interesting cultural credits!

^Ok Larry. I just posted the first of the Luna Park trip reports. Thanks for applying the pressure.

When looking through the TPR Park Index, I noticed that there wasn't an entry for either of Australia's Luna Parks. After a quick email to Larry, I agreed that posting a couple of trip reports about these old seaside parks from when I visited earlier this year would be fun and a great way to give back to TPR. With that in mind I start today with Luna Park Melbourne. Luna Park Melbourne was built in 1912 and is home to the oldest continually running roller coaster in the world. It's name is Scenic Railway and unfortunately the ride was under refurbishment when we visited on 12/28/07. One of the more interesting facts about this ride is that apparently it is one of only two remaining coasters that require a brakesman in the car. As always any comments that you have are appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this! We ended up spending nine wonderful days in Melbourne, which included watching the New Years Eve fireworks over the water. What a great city! Thanks for reading. Judging from the looks, this neighborhood isn't the best. Since the park really isn't comprised of much, it only took a couple of really hot summer hours for us to be ready for departure. Oh well, I guess we have to go on the ghetto ghost train. Please open this ride for us. I don't care if they are retracking it! The ocean is just beyond the Scenic Railway coaster in this picture. So here are few more random photos. This park is crowded, hot and not very attractive and thus hard to get good photos of. Of course the back side was a different story. It was housed in a tent that was themed pretty nicely in the front. Their new attraction for the year was a Tomb Raider maze. They also have a Zamperla powered coaster called Silly Serpent. The park also has two other coasters. This Galaxi type coaster is called Metropolis. The Scenic Railway actually forms a large oval and the entire park is contained within it. Unfortunately our suspicions were realized very quickly. The ride was closed. The ride's entrance is very fancy. The real reason for our visit was to ride Scenic Railway, the world's oldest continually operating roller coaster. The scaffolding was a bad sign right off the bat. This entrance is known as the Mr. Moon Gateway and was constructed in 1912 and restored in 1999. Upon exiting the tram we were excited to see the park's signature entrance. Luna Park Melbourne sits a bit outside of the city's main center and thus requires a twenty minute tram ride to reach it. But it also has its fair share of historic places as well. Melbourne is a fantastic city with plenty of new modern buildings. We arrived in Melbourne from Christchurch, New Zealand on Christmas morning. The streets were abandoned!

I threw in a picture of Roadrunner Express from SFDK, but is looks similar to the one you already have posted.

^^^I feel inspired!

Keep it up Robb. I love to pic with virtual KidTums picking her nose!

It was great. Although it has the same layout as the one at Beijing Shijingshan, this one was a lot better. (And not a ripoff!) It was pretty forceful, but not painful in the least. I still think I like Schwarzkopf shuttles the best though! Thanks for the comments. Keep 'em coming!

That will be one strangely-placed parking lot, way back in the corner of the park like that. I think every park should have a parking lot themed roller coaster. Maybe this will become a trend!

Thanks John. I'm sad that I never got a chance to visit Cypress Gardens.

Ok in an effort to finish this thread before I grow old, today I bring you the "lovely" city of Shanghai and Jin Jiang Action Park, which is, for now, the largest amusement park in the city. Of course with Happy Valley under construction and Disneyland rumored, this park could face steep competition in the coming years. With this in mind, they have added some top notch attractions including Joyland. It is a boat journey through several scenes with children from all over the world singing the same song. Just wait until you see the pictures, because I don't want to ruin this marvelous attraction for you. I think Disney Imagineers might be taking a close look at Joyland for future guidance. Anyway, the TR will start with a few images from around Shanghai and then go into the park. If you enjoy these trip reports please feel free to comment. I love to hear what everyone thinks. Thanks in advance! BTW here is a pic of the entry room of It's A Small World at Tokyo Disneyland as a comparison. I hope you enjoyed! Oh no the sleeping giant awoke! Finally its time for the long subway ride back to the hotel. and another go around on the shuttle loop. Other than take a quick ride on the crappy Chinese knock off Disk-O With that done there wasn't much else to do. And Finally, The Bride's of Chucky Choir! Hey look I found some old friends. Ok, I'll keep quiet now and let you continue on with your tour. What a clever idea, singing children! Oh well it must be my imagination lets go through the ride. Hey this loading room looks a little familiar. *cough* Tokyo Disney *cough* Part of the queue. Something about this feels familiar. We better go in to investigate. It turns out to be something called Joyland. Back to the park now and what do we see. What is that MASSIVE building wrapping around the pukey coaster? Endless rows of housing blocks. Here is a nice overview of most of the park. (The weather wasn't great and the smog doesn't help either!) Next up we decided to go on the big wheel for some aerial views. With dinosaurs!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually the Karst Cave Coaster is an indoor powered coaster. But this didn't look like a good sign. Is this what they do when white people ride? After checking out a few more rides we started to head to the third and final coaster in the park. A good view of the park from the top. Yes, you guessed it! Yet another cloned Golden Horse crappy spinning mouse! Luckily we survived so I could barf in my mouth at the sight of the next coaster. Yah that's how we roll! No launch here. It lifts you up one side and then drops you back through. It was soon going to be our turn to ride. After watching the train fly through the station A view of the layout. To go to the shuttle loop name Roller Coaster. Ok by now we were ready to ride a coaster so we passed the cleverly named "Flume Ride". Pretty soon we began to get hungry. For some reason they only had one thing for lunch. But then the decor began to improve! Around the entrance things didn't look all to nice. And it wouldn't be a great park without a ghetto monorail. Part of the park is made up of cheesy carnival style attractions. Looking back towards the entrance you can see that this park sits right beside a busy freeway. Giraffes and the Eiffel Tower. Score! In true Big Mike style I bring you a park map. Emphasis on the ACTION! Ok enough with Shanghai, its time to visit Jin Jiang Action Park. This is the Expo's mascot. To me he looks like a Tooth. Instead of Olympic countdown clocks like in the rest of China, Shanghai has decided to put clocks around town to countdown until the start of the 2010 World Expo in the city. Across the water lies to Oriental Pearl Tower. (Yes it contains a credit and no we didn't ride it!) And this area along the waterfront is known at The Bund. This is a bit of the old city. Before heading to the park, we can explore Shanghai a bit. The train is sleek and sexy. During peak times the maglev runs at around 431km/h (268mph), but we were just off peak so it only ran at 301 km/h (190mph). =( The real reason I was excited to fly into Shanghai was the opportunity to ride in the world's first Maglev train from the airport to the city! Since we were able to get tickets for dirt cheap, we flew from Wuhan in Central China in lieu of taking the train. Not only did this save us 12 hours, but we got to see our plane's shadow!

^Thanks for the kind words. I know it sounds crazy, but walking on the rusted out track of a roller coaster was a bit eery.

^The Planet Hollywood Hotel used to be called the Aladdin. It changed over some time in the past two years. Thanks fro the TR Matt. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed Desperado, since the last time I rode it, the ride was quite rough. I agree with you that it is a fun coaster. As for Miner Mike, I was there the other day and thought about bribing the ride op to let me try, but didn't go through with it. Considering there is surveillance everywhere, I doubt they would do it, but I would love to see someone get that Miner Mike credit. I'm jealous that my son has it and I don't.

I know I'm a little late to the conversation, but I have to throw my vote in for the wombat as the cutest animal ever. Every time I saw one in Australia I got excited. Wombats are what teddy bears should be modeled after! Ok, back to being a man ............ now!

I have been to quite a few so I thought I would just list the eight I haven't been to. Alaska Hawaii Colorado Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Missouri Arkansas Hopefully I can get to these soon to complete my state credit collection!

I just visited the Adventuredome yesterday and while Rim Runner was closed, they appeared to be doing maintenance work on it. There were absolutely no signs of it being torn out or of any new rides going in. When I asked one of the employees, she told me that Rim Runner had been open very recently. My guess is that they have postponed any major additions given the state of the economy. Has anyone heard any other news about this at all?