Airtime&Gravity

I've been to both Elitch Gardens and Darien lake, and I agree with ginzo's statement that the parks will need a lot of work to bring them up to HFE standards. While neither were particularly bad, they were just boring. Nothing at the parks stands out, service was standard, and the park's just lacked any real atmosphere. I'm happy that a great company is now going to manage them, but HFE is going to have to invest a lot of time, effort, and money into these parks. Darien Lake has a lot of potential with lots of expansion room, the hotel, campground, and concert venue, and it can become a really nice park. Elitch Gardens can't do much due to it's location, but it can still become a nice local park. Having also been to Dollywood, I hope HFE can bring some of what makes that such a great park to these new properties.

Reuters

For the Longest Time - Sherwood

Wow, I was a little concerned when the animated pov was posted, and it looked like a wooden "Jet Coaster". I doubt it'll top the Intamin pre-fab coasters, but this looks like a contender for one of the top wooden coasters in the world. It looks like a great ride nonetheless. Now, we just have to hope the park's maintenance department can keep it running to the best of its ability.

Awesome, I remember seeing you post the concept a while back, and it's great to see it finally being implemented. Very nice design, simple, yet informative.

^^That would be great news if Opryland was rebuilt, but at the same time, they'd have to work hard to compete with Dollywood. While not real close, Dollywood wasn't that long of a drive(Bias: I'm from Chicago with just one park within a 3+ hour drive), and that park has grown a lot since Opryland closed. I know Dollywood, being in Pigeon Forge, doesn't deal with the traditional regional market economic rules, but Gaylord will have to work hard to differentiate a new Opryland. The Sea Word announcement sounds promising, but with a cost of $10 million, I wouldn't expect that Mack or Intamin launched coaster. Dark Knight cost $7.5 million, which leads me to believe that if it is a coaster, that it'll be a family ride. With that in mind, a spinning coaster such as Bakken's Tornado or a Maurer Söhne coaster would be great.

I don't remember how old I was, but it began when I started watching the amusement park shows on Discovery and TLC. My earliest coaster memory is from riding Spacley's Sprocket Rockets in 1998 or 1999, but it wasn't until 2002 that you could probably call myself an enthusiast. That year, my neighbor told me about RCDB, and I would ride my first major coaster that year. Since I was a short kid, I didn't do much coaster wise until 2005, and I'm kicking myself for it, as I didn't take advantage of a dead Cedar Point when I visited the park in 2004. So, while interested in coasters for as long as I can remember, I didn't really love them until 1998/1999, with me becoming an enthusiast in 2002.

For me, it depends on what you count as an inversion. In order of first ride: 1. Typhoon - Santa's Village (inclined loop) 2. Superman Ultimate Flight - Six Flags Great America 3. Batman: the Ride - Six Flags Great America I still count Typhoon as my first looping coaster, as outside of powered/water coasters, I go by RCDB, but I can see where people would say Batman is my first looping coaster.

Blackout - Valet Parking

The mysterious yellow B&M is finally being constructed at Ocean Park as rumored. Link

2011 Plans: http://www.azoosmentpark.com/ More photos(don't know how I missed them from the last post): The slide from when the park first opened. When I visited not long before the park closed, this was in really bad shape, don't know if it was in use, and it looked like the "how many splinters would you get in your ass" slide from the Nara Dreamland video. The Whip from Kiddieland Azoosment Park's Facebook Page The park is improving, it's already looking better than when it closed, and hopefully the new owners are able to turn the park into something it used to be. With the old Santa's Village and Kiddieland rides to start, hopefully the owners continue to expand the ride selection in the coming years. While I doubt any major coaster like Typhoon will ever be built again, I can see a small kiddie coaster and maybe a family coaster being added down the line. Although, there seems to be an abundance of asphalt in some areas, so hopefully that is fixed too.

Okay, I take back what I said about the developers dreams of getting Disney rides back, as Disney appears to be much more involved than I thought. Link So this is now starting to sound similar to Tokyo Disney but, obviously, on a much smaller scale.

While small, 30000 square meters is bigger than Nick Universe, so there is plenty of room for a god amount of rides and attractions. Although "giant" is still an overstatement. It's nice to see a park planed for Israel actually have a chance of getting built, but I have doubts that they'll be able to get any Disney rides. They might be able to build Disney-esque rides, but I doubt Disney will have anything to do with the rides at this park. This park might receive some planning help from Disney on how to operate, but other than that, I don't see Disney helping this park. The ability to get some Disney rides seems a little over ambitious to me, and I'm wondering why they said there is no certinity that it will be a branded Disney Park. Did the owners think there was a chance, is it poor writing/translation, or am I interpreting it wrong? Great news, and hopefully this park ends up getting built as Israel has a pretty poor amusement park selection despite a good size market.

Back to the Future - Stereo Skyline

Never thought So. Cal would have more snow on the ground than Chicago at this time of the year. Cool photos(no pun intended), and definitely something you don't see often.

It looks like a good design, and a lot better than their 8 and 10 inversion coasters. However, where those have an overuse of barrel rolls, this design seems to have an overuse of corkscrews. From a rider comfort point, corkscrews aren't the best element, and IMO, if a park was to go for the record, a 100% custom design would be the best choice. I know there are only so many different elements a coaster can have, but all the corkscrews seem repetitive just like the barrel rolls on the current designs. I'd still love to see this design get built though, it's just that I think it can be better. Although, considering how compact this ride is, it's great that Intamin went with a new design that didn't just mean adding two more barrel rolls as mentioned in other posts.

In no order 1. Breaking the 400ft barrier just 3 years after breaking the 300ft barrier 2. The 4D coaster 3. 90 degree turns on a wooden coaster 4. The hydromagnetic water coasters 5. The Intamin plug n play wooden coasters 6. The rapid construction of theme parks being built in China Don't know what I was thinking when I mentioned breaking the 300ft barrier earlier.

This Notebook - Dropout Year

1. SFGAM's Hurricane Harbor Expansion Announcement 2. SFGAM reopening Little Dipper 3. Santa's Village reopening(not big for the industry, but big for Chicago) 4. Six Flags emerging from bankruptcy 5. Ed Hart taking over Kentucky Kingdom

1. Going to Dollywood 2. Going to Holiday World 3. TPR Day at SFGAM 4. Going to World of Coke and trying the horrific Beverly

The longest I've ever waited was 3 hours for Superman: Ultimate Flight in 2005. It was at Coasters After Dark(which has no real benefit), and there were mechanical problems. The second longest was 2 hours(twice) for Dark Knight on opening day. Again, there were frequent mechanical problems, and the fact it was opening day, which lead to the long lines. On the plus side, everything else had a short wait due to everyone else being in line for Dark Knight. While not the longest wait, the worst wait I've experienced was one that was over an hour for Viper during Fright Fest. There was no line in the queue itself, and everyone was in the station. It was completely chaotic with line jumping, although there were no real sections for rows, and confusion as groups tried to organize so they rode together.

I get the point that the lockers serve, and I'm all for the person with a giant souvenir, purse, backpack, etc. having to rent a locker, as you don't need to bring that much crap with you into a park. All you really need at most would be a wallet, cell phone, camera, and mp3 player. All of these should fit in your pockets, so there is no need to bring everything else with you. If you need more, go out to your car nd get it when you need it. That being said, it was annoying to have to rent a locker when I bough a souvenir bottle, especially if the wait wasn't very long. I know it only costs $1, but that can add up, especially if waits are short. I haven't bought a bottle the past few seasons as I didn't want to pay every time I rode something. I think that if Six Flags was going to make a mandatory locker policy, a fee of free-$.50 would be better. It's cheap, it employs psychological pricing(being under $1), so guests, even though they are paying feel like they are getting a good deal, and they'd probably still make a profit at the $.50(maybe $.25) rate.

While there was some temporary storage added recently, at least I noticed it recently, the lockers seemed mandatory. The attendants at the queue entrance were looking to make sure people used the lockers, and I assume the bins were for shoes and anything the attendants might have missed. As Jeremie said while they might have made a profit, guests didn't like the policy. They would complain and argue with the attendant, and I'd hear them complaining in line. I guess Six Flags figured that whatever profit they made was not worth the guest anger, especially if it meant guests weren't buying souvenirs, sport bottles, or revisiting the park. Michigan's Adventure had what seemed like an efficient system of cubicles arranged by train and row. Hopefully Six Flags adds a system like that in the future instead of just some plastic bin. Everything is organized, and it limits theft due to it being arranged by train/row, with only the section of the train in the station accessible.

Shattered - O.A.R

The loose article policy has been changed for Six Flags Great America so that the lockers are no longer mandatory. However, other Six Flags parks don't seem to have changed their policy. Has anyone heard about this change moving company wide, or is it just SFGAM trying to stay the best park in the chain? http://www.sixflags.com/greatAmerica/info/policies.aspx Edit: For reference, I added SFoG's policy for what the "old" policy was like. http://www.sixflags.com/overGeorgia/info/parkpolicies.aspx