Gav

^Yeah, they do, I think they did it so the ride vehicle goes completely vertical when it is on the spike. Because the vehicle runs on 2 sets of bogies (one set at each end of the vehicle), it wouldn't be quite vertical at the top because the 'bottom' set of bogies would still be on the curved section of track but the top set would be 'over' on the vertical part (when viewing the ride from side on). But by making the track beyond vertical, the 'top' bogies would line up vertically above the 'bottom" set and therefore the vehicle would be at true vertical.

^Uterus? elbohg93we typon g looksa lmikew dyutcgh

I went to hershey park today. ae yu sayinmgh booooo ort bolo-urns

Zip merging is where when 2 cars are in 2 lanes, the car behind has to give way to the one in front. So when there are a lot of cars everyone merges in order from frontmost car onwards. It is called a zip merge because its like the teeth on a zipper going together. It actually works pretty well since there is a clear way of doing things.

Eh, here is some of my stuff:

I know here in Aus the way the line markings are done make it the fast lane gets right of way when it goes down to one less lane. So really, there is no rule saying when to move over, but anyone with a brain should be able to see that moving over early is better because then you get priority at the merge. I think though with lane closures (eg due to roadworks) then people should just zip merge at the point where the lane ends and then it would be simple.

^All it did for me was make the computer play a funny noise and turn on sticky keys. In a sense that happening was wonderful.

I wouldn't consider this a water coaster because of this element. Tracked sections on what are normally plain flume rides are more common than most people would think, Wild West Falls at Warner Bros Movie World, Rio Bravo at Parque Warner, Splash Mountain of course, Bugs white water rapids at SFFT, probably heaps I am missing, I dont think these should be counted as being a whole roller coaster for one or two of these little elements. It really comes down to common sense, think about what the "essence" or the "spirit" of the ride is about, and I think with Dudleys, it's more of a flume than a coaster.

I'm actually going to be arriving there on the afternoon of new years day, and will be staying until the 6th. I was planning on just seeing Universal Studios on that first day (probably less likely to be packed), and then Busch and IOA on the next two days, and then saving Disney for the last 3 Days. How insane can I expect it to be in this early January period?

^That beer you couldn't remember the origin of is from Australia (Tasmania) Pictured on the front are Tasmanian tigers, which used to live in Tasmania but became extinct early in the 20th century.

It seems everybody else who has been to knotts has had these quiet days where they could ride heaps. Too bad my visit consisted of being swamped by line jumping school kids. I think during the course of 7 hourse I got on Silver Bullet, Xcel, Riptide, Sky Cabin, Ghostrider, Sierra Sidewinder, Supreme Scream and that mine train thing. Montezoomas and perilious plunge were shut, didnt even attempt boomerang or bigfoot. Ah well, Silver Bullet, Ghostrider and Xcel were all awesome rides.

Were you guys looking forward to seeing Lagunasia? there is this ride there i have been wondering about for ages called "Treasure Hunting" which is one of those motion base tracked rides like Indiana Jones (come to think of it, its just a rip off of Indiana Jones anyway) Being a big fan of those, it'd be cool to eventually see pics of that whenever. I think I saw one pic showing the vehicles in the station on some site, but it'd be interesting to see how a non disney/universal park does that sort of ride. Lagunasia looks like a little gem of a park though, Japanese must have a thing for parks with a sea theme. have fun there.

So what can an aquatrax do that other launched coasters cant?

Nobody cares.

Meh, for lack of a better place Ill dip in anyway. Basically I'd vote to the left in Federal elections, but right in the State elections. It pretty much stems from the fact Australia has 3 levels of government and it's very clearly set forth what each is responsible so I think certain approaches are actually better for each. So i'd rather have the left wing party (Labor) in control at the Federal level since the federal government is responsible for healthcare management, social security, higher education, defence etc. so they'd be more suited to those sorts of responsibilities. But Id rather have the right wing party (Liberal - Long story, but our right wing party uses the name "Liberal" even though that wouldn't make sense to you guys) in control at the state level since they take care of stuff like Roads, Hospitals, Water Supply etc so they'd me more suited to those sort of responsibilities. Nobody gives a crap about what the 3rd level (Local Councils) do since they only take care of menial stuff like Garbage Collection and parking control and nobody could stuff that up. Another weird thing here, voting is compulsory so nobody "forgets" to vote...though at the polls when you actually get your ballot paper you can do what you want with it so in reality people can just doodle on it and chuck it in.

Hometown: Shepparton VIC Australia Nearest City: Melbourne

There's probably heaps of them out there, on my most recent trip to LA, I didnt bother with Gold rusher or any of the kiddie ones, at Knotts I skipped Boomerang and Jaguar! (Montezoomas was shut) and at DL i skipped gadgets go coaster. It pretty much boils down to the fact that I go to parks to have fun and would rather spend my time re-riding good coasters rather than wasting time on others for the purpose of getting a "credit" (whatever the point in getting "credits" is )

Haha, I just noticed this thread. One thing that really bugs me is those people (often redneck/chav/bogan types) who give their kids pretentious exotic sounding names, or worse change an existing one into this style, eg instead of Michalea they'll call them something like "Mikaylah" But going back to the first post in this thread (well, it is fresh in my mind) Well, as the saying goes "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". Perhaps your employer could look at paying a better wage to your cleaners, that way you could attract other workers who know English etc rather than poor migrants that take whatever job they can get/will work for cheap.

Hey, don't try and blame it on us.

www.danimation.com for me.

This vid has a bit of footage of the boom moving at the 28 second mark, ignore the sounds the user added though . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_XckNS8h_Q Now I haven't seen the ride, but I'm guessing from the description it would be something like this. The big arm divides the floor area in half, it would sweep around to the 9 o'clock position to hold the saucers on the left hand side in the loading area while at the same time letting the saucers on the right hand side out to have fun. When the time was up for the ones on the right the arm would sweep to the 3 o'clock position.

I think its a pretty good show, though I think they could improve their scientific method in some cases. A lot of the time when they do stuff properly it's really good, but sometimes it's just a case of making some weird contraption that destroys stuff so they sometimes dont "bust" myths properly. When I was in the US an had access to cable I watched it all the time.

But they sure are nice when done well

I am actually going to be in Orlando from the 1st to the 6th of January (Already got tickets and accomodation ) But I was wondering how busy the parks are generally over that period. Obviously I'm expecting New Years Day to be busy, but other than that? Im really looking foward to IOA, especially spiderman and DD. Im going to try and squeeze in 8 parks in that period though (probably will only spend half a day at USF since I have already seen the one in Hollywood) and the other half of the day at SW. Im sure with Disney I can do 4 parks in 3 days if I stick to the main stuff.

I think they must have made a mistake when they designed Kumba because the loop goes around the lift hill.