Jim S.

"You can have a Big Dipper, going up and down, all around the bend. You can have a bumper car bumping, this amusement never ends." --Peter Gabriel

Seconded. Last year at PPP there were a lot of broken cars. Before the PPP crowd had got to them, that is. Turns out that DAFE had had an ERT session the night before. The video is pretty amazing, if you can find it. By the way, not all the cars at Knoebels are the same.

I haven't had a night ride on Fahrenheit yet, but for me the best night ride in the park is Great Bear. There's just something about the drop, and the terrain.

The mystery creature is a tiger swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.

I doubt that they ever run more than 1 car on Leap The Dips. I don't even know if they'd be allowed to since there are no block brakes. (Although that doesn't stop Knoebels, but I personally wouldn't trust LTD not to get stuck.) It's funny that the park knew you guys were coming but nobody arranged to let you on the kiddie coaster. On another board (that I won't mention because they have an irrational hatred for this one), the manager of the park posts sometimes, and he always says that if anybody is coming to the park be sure to look him up and he'll get you on the kiddie coaster. There must have been a lack of communication that day.

I never thought the Mexican food at the World Food Court was bad. Sure it may not be authentic, but it's a good deal for the money.

Anybody know if Skyliner got new lap bars? I was just there last year and I don't remember them looking like that. (On the other hand, the brake hardware still looks as bad.) Everybody notices the baseball stadium next to Skyliner. Did no-one notice the maintenance man's dog's tombstone inside the turn-around?

Wow, either it's got better or I keep getting a bad train. I've tried the front and the back and nothing saves it this year. And the ends are worse than the middle. I'm puzzled.

13 times on Hydra?! Man, what seats did you ride in? Everytime I've been there this year, Hydra has rattled worse than I've ever had a non-Arrow rattle. Maybe I'm just riding the wrong seats, but I rode the same seats last year and it wasn't nearly that bad.

I was at Hershey on Tuesday the 12th, and as far as I could tell, Comet was NOT trimmed, or if it was it was hardly noticeable. Others have said the same thing this year. It's still no Phoenix, but it no longer sucks. Other than the loading time, that is. It's still the worst in the park. The sign at the start of the queue saying 20 minutes is the biggest joke in the industry. The queue was only 2/3 full and it was about 40 minutes. Second place in the sucky loading time category is a tie between Great Bear and Wildcat. Wildcat is tolerable because it doesn't get a crowd much of the time, but Great Bear is ridiculous. The Wild Mouse was braked before the big drop, which I've seen before, and also the subsequent drops, which I hadn't. But the brakes are still off on the mousy part of the track, so it's still a win. You think YOU had a bad wait for Fahrenheit in the sun? Well, on Tuesday it wasn't super-hot, there was a nice breeze going all day, but they were watering the queue! They had sprinklers set up a few feet back from three of the turns in the queue. They must have thought it would provide a nice mist. But the drop size was too big, and they failed to account for the wind. People did NOT appreciate getting soaked.

Wasn't this the instance where Dainan or Josh said that it was raining the morning they did the Kingda Ka shoot? So goggles might not have been such a bad idea.

Knoebels has one in the log flume.

Well, Fahrenheit was the steepest before Steel Hawg, right? And I'm sure more people know what Fahrenheit is.

There must be a difference between the weekend and weekday crowds at Dorney. On weekdays I see people going shirtless in the dry park, but they don't seem to hold up operations as bad as they do at Cedar Point. I've never seen guys try to go on the rides shirtless, but every time I've been there they've let girls go on in bikini tops and skimpy shorts. (I never saw anyone walking around the dry park in a bikini bottom.) The only thing they complain about is people trying to ride shoeless. The one time I was at Cedar Point though, they were making everybody put their shirts on to go on the rides. I've never seen anyone smoking a joint at Dorney, and I've seen minimal amounts of people smoking tobacco at all let alone where they aren't supposed to be. I've never seen the park trashed (bathrooms are a different story) and I've only seen the parking lot trashed once. I've never seen anyone line-jumping in the station (although you're the second person I've seen complain about it), and only an average amount of line-jumping in the queues. (A couple of times last year security was on top of it, lately nobody has been watching -- but nobody complained either.)

1) I don't have an account with that newspaper's website either. I read a physical copy that someone left on the table at work. 2) Since I didn't attempt to register with their website, I was not aware that they were charging for it. Some newspapers make you register to read for free -- I don't know why, maybe collecting advertising data? -- so I had assumed it was one of those. If I had known they were charging for it -- which they don't mention on the page that asks for your login information -- I wouldn't have posted it. 3) Although I don't believe in copyrights, I don't know what Robb's policy on them is. But since he works in the entertainment industry, I suspect he's in favor of them.

Well the problem isn't the track, it's the cars. They think they thrash back and forth too much (I think it's supposed to do that, but...) so they videotape a run, then try to figure out how to modify the cars. You're lucky you saw it run once.

I was just at Dorney yesterday and the water park had much bigger lines. Even the line for the log flume, which is in the dry park, was only down the stairs of the station. Most of the coasters were a station-full or less most of the day. Occasionally the line would get down the stairs, but the only thing that was into the first switchback was Hydra because it broke down. (And the Wild Mouse because they're insanely paranoid about loading it for some reason.) The main parking lot was at least 3/4 full, and there were over a dozen buses. (Warning: when the water park closes (7 PM?), the dry park gets a lot busier. Also, food service is slow pretty much everywhere no matter how few people are in the park.) I wish I could suggest something to help with their fear of coasters, but Dorney doesn't seem like it would lend itself to that. By far the smoothest ride in the park is also the tallest (Steel Force), and the smallest adult coaster is the most violent! (I'm talking about Thunderhawk, not the Wild Mouse which always looks like there's no track under you so it probably wouldn't help either.)

There was an article in the Danville newspaper today (http://www.pressenterpriseonline.com/ but you'll have to register) saying that they weren't sure it was going to open this season, although they wouldn't rule it out either. They didn't say specifically what the issue with the train was, but they did say that they're concerned about it being too wild of a ride. They want it to appeal to everybody, not just coaster enthusiasts. I hope they don't slow it down too much. For $3 (yes, it's up to $3 now, even though the website says $2.50) I expect it to be a wild ride!

On the TV news today they said it was a squirrel chewing through wires. I don't think that's entirely accurate. It sounds to me like the line was shorted, not broken, and the short failed to clear between cycles of the automatic reclosers. It must have been a really big squirrel...

Even better than the queue entertainment was when MF would do its station flyby and you could still hear him going WOO! on the train.

I've only been there once (three days last month), but what they were doing at that time was, is you're in line by the time it closes, you get a ride but depending on the ride and the operators you don't necessarily get to choose the front seat. (On the other hand, one of the days they were assigning seats on Maverick all day long. Another day they weren't.) The funky part was, the park's closing time was listed as 10 PM, but at every ride we were at at closing they said we had til 10:08 to run around and get back in line for re-rides (They were also doing some sort of fireworks/laser show every night at 10, but between the re-rides and the sheer size of the park, we never got anywhere near it by the time it finished!)

If a gravity railroad counts as a coaster, this should. The only problem is that there's a discontinuity -- there are no original gravity railroads left, and probably no riders thereof either. So are we free to change the definition?

Yeah, the guy singing Michael Jackson songs, and whatever else he sings. When I was there, he was spending the morning at MF, which seems to be his usual habitat based on the videos on YouTube.

The one at Lakemont had a lot of padding on the lap bars when I rode it last year, and I had no problem with it.

While I wouldn't say that Millennium Force sucks, I agree that it doesn't live up to its hype and is several notches from the best ride in the park. For me, that honor goes to Maverick, which I didn't find the least bit painful even though the transitions do whip you around. Second place for me goes to Magnum, which is seems more forceful than the overbraked Steel Force, and third to Raptor which is the wildest invert I've been on but still manages to not be excessively rough. The best thing about MF was the view. That, and the weird guy that hangs out there. Evidently you didn't encounter him, or I think you'd have noticed. Did you ride Corkscrew? For me, that seriously contends with Mantis for the "most painful" award. In fact, it has no redeeming value whatsoever except that the corkscrews would look nice sitting there as sculpture.