montezooma

^ That is a great picture. The LA Busch park has always intrigued me. I visited it several times as a kid and really liked the log flume and the brewery tour. Seeing the ariel view and the parks boundaries it is no wonder that Busch didn't pursue this theme park like they did the one in FL. It doesn't seem like it would have been able to expand to compete with the other parks in the LA market, there's no room for a Kumba or Griffon. I still drive by the old park every now and then when I am craving a Tommie's burger and you can still see sections of the old monorail track winding through certain parts of the brewery. Thanks for the post....and now a word from our sponsor.

Ahhhh...Now that's the good stuff. I loved Circus World when it was in that "carny" phase. I could not ride the Weiner Looping without blacking out. This is the best THREAD EV-ER cough-shane'samusmentattic-cough

Thanks for posting that....strange, no where as clever as Psyclone IMO

I haven't seen that one, I have the Magnum Commercial but would love to see the Millennium Force one if anyone has it....

I noticed that music also. Did you notice that they are exiting from Tidal Wave and not Psyclone?

Even though the ride didn't live up to all the hype you have to give the commercial credit. It really is creative and captures the images that the name "Psyclone" (one of my all-time favorite coaster names!) brings to mind.

PSYCLONE Take a journey... Does this Journey only exist in my mind? OR? Is it somehow Real?

Park TV Commercials So lets have some fun in April...Do you love park commercials? I do, that is why I spent several hours suffering through shitcoms like Family Matters, Step by Step, Full House and others to record theme park commercials. I have gathered the ones I was able to collect over the years and have transfered them to digital. For the next 30+ days I am going to post a new "old" park commercial everyday, so check back often to see some of the greats that introducerides like "The Iron Dragon", Knott's Wacky Soap Box Racers and SFMM's "Flashback"(Could I actually be in love with a roller coaster?). I have quite a random collection from parks like Disneyland to Ocean Park, there is even one from Dogpatch USA. Now please beware that some of them are missing the first or last couple of seconds, I did the best I could with the equipment I had back in the days. I always love to see what the parks come up with each year, these commercials ought to take you back... Lets start off with one of my all time favorites... - SFMM's Psyclone - The Ultimate Mindbender - Magnum XL-200 Get to the PO!NT - MGM Grand Adventures on page 57 - THUNDER RUN only at the Kingdom - Indiana Jone's Adventure - Now your fears have a name! - Knott's Silver Bullet on page 58 - Cedar Point - Thunder Canyon - Demon Drop on page 58 - Knott's - take a "wacky" ride to Catnip Junction - Silver Dollar City - Lost River of the Ozarks - The Beast on page 59 - Six Flags is building a BETTER mountain at Magic Mountain - Enchanted Forest - The Playland of Indiana Dunes - Worlds of Fun "Break Away" - Tibidabo (Spain) TV commercial - Sidewinder coiled and ready to STRIKE at Hersheypark - Flashback - Six Flags Magic Mountain - Disneyland - Halloween on page 63 - Cedar Point - The cure for the Summertime Blues - Sesame Place - Sesame Island - Drop Zone - "16th floor: lingerie and power tools." - Six Flags Magic Moutain's - Mountain Report - Disneyland's - "Magic Mountains" - Ocean Park - Hong Kong - Linnanmaki - Finland - Kings Island - "Do It All" - Canada's Wonderland - "Wonderland's the One" - Busch Gardens "The Old Country" on page 65 - Busch Gardens "Questor" - Six Flags Great America "Power Dive" - Six Flags Great America "Twicket" - Silver Dollar City - Dogpatch USA featuring "BOZO" - Six Flags "a dogs view" - Six Flags - Mc Donald's commercial - Darien Lake "summer goes fast" - Bob Lo Island "Lets twist again...like we did last summer" - Kentucky Kingdom "Ride for Hours" - SFMM Psyclone - part 2 - Six Flags is building a better Mountain - Part 2 - Cedar Point "The Amazement Park" part 2 - The Iron Dragon "the ONLY coaster that can FLY" - Knott's "Country Ho-Down" - Knott's "Snoopy's American Celebration" - Six Flags over Georgia "Viper" - Six Flags over Texas "Let Us Take You Away" - Story Land "Hooray" - Wonderland Park - Geauga Lake "Where is everyone?" - Frontier City "the Wild Cat" - Toon Town - Disneyland "A whole new world" - Six Flags Magic Mountain or Disneyland? - Elitch Gardens radio spot - Starburst featuring "Mountain Express" - Canada's Wonderland - Worlds of Fun featuring Conway Twitty's shorts - GTE phonebook featuring "Pysclone" - Elitch Gardens "100 years Worth of Fun" - DisneyWorld - Six Flags "Australia" ????? - Anheuser Busch Theme Parks - The Beach waterpark - WaterWorld "Lost River of the Phaorohs" - Water Country USA

Morgan Manufacturing Now here is a post that is appropriate for April Fools day. While I absolutely LOVE Morgan Coasters I can't exactly say the same for the trains. I recently took a trip to San Antonio for Spring Break, it was my first visit to Sea World, and the Steel Eel was by far my favorite coaster on the trip (which also included Fiesta Texas). It was just pure roller coaster bliss. Unfortunately many a great wooden rides have been ruined by running Morgan Trains on them. So while I sing the praises of the Steel Morgan Coaster I cringe at the thought of riding Morgan on Wood. Happy April Fools Day! This is the perfect day to celebrate the Morgan Train and how proudly it runs on rides like CGA's Grizzly! PS- My second favorite ride of the trip was Road Runner Express, that ride kicked ass! Touring the Basement of the Alamo, can you say AH-DOH-BEE? Fiesta Texas My new Number 1 San Antonio, TX coaster A match made in Coaster Hell. Morgan trains on the Grizzly

Bolliger & Mabillard Here is another B&M brochure once they started their line of roller coasters: sit down, inverted and stand ups and of course their famous trains for Psyclone.

Hey Scott- Do we get to see the inside of that Circus World brochure or are you just teasing us???

Olsor- I love this thread. It is so good to see this old stuff, thanks for posting

B&M made the bobsleds for the second generation Bobsled, or the Cedar Point version. The boblsleds featured side by side seating instead of inline seating. I believe the bobsleds were also used on the Rolling Thunder ride at Six Flags Great America, but I could be wrong on that

B&M the early years Well I am back from my spring break trip to San Antonio and all I can say is...Why are there not more Morgan Coasters??? I loved the Steel Eel. Anyways I wanted to do a quick update since it has been awhile so here is something from the early years of B&M. The first brochure is before they started manufacturing coasters and just did design and parts. There are some interesting designs for a flat ride and a coaster layout showing interlocking loops.

Finally a heated debate in my thread!!! Bring it on! I can see many reasons for not operating the Metro again and the one that stands out the most is the ride not meeting code. That does not neccessarily mean building code but for that ride to comply to todays ADA codes would require a major retrofit. And unfortunetly when you are a big company like Six Flags you don't really get to go with the "grandfathered" excuse when it comes to handicapped visitors.

RAPTOR 1993 Well I am off to San Antonio for Spring Break. I am taking the kids and were are going to get some Texas History at the Alamo and some Texas Thrills at Fiesta Texas and Sea World. I thought I would put up a quick update before I take off. As I was going through the attic last week I came across a big box of old videos. Tons of stuff on coasters that I had recorded years ago. So I have converted a lot of the stuff to digital and will be doing some video updates as well as all the old brochure and other print stuff. This first one is a promotional video I received from Cedar Point back in 1993, the year before it opened. This quirky storyline and video introduced the parks 11th roller coaster..."Raptor" I believe Raptor was the 5th B&M inverted coaster. It opened in 1994 and at the time is was by FAR the biggest, longest, fastest and all the other "est". This video has some interviews with some of Cedar Points top brass including Dick and Claude from B&M. It also has some pretty primitive computer animation that shows the ride layout and POV. Boy animation sure has come a long way since then. Enjoy the video and see you again after Spring Break!!! Shane

It looks to me like the ride platform is still there, they just cut off the roof.

And just for S%$ts and giggles here is a little promotional piece we put together for the park that was going to be built for the Seattle area. As mentioned above. All the rides were purchased from MGM grand adventures and disassembled. They were stored in Vegas and ready to be moved up to Seattle when we ran up against a local indian tribe that opposed our project. Unfortunately they controlled the water rights and that put a huge hurdle in front of the project. We ended up selling off 60% of the land that was going to be used for the park. We still retain about 20 acres off of I-5 and we will be building a new FEC in place of the park. So as a TPR Exclusive, here is a look at a park that was almost built in the Northwest. PS. We also had a wood coaster that was designed by GCI, I will try to find the layout and post it later.

Here are four pictures. In the Arrow brochure you can see in the upper left hand corner picture the boat as it is passing over the Hydro bump. There is also a description of the bump in the brochure verbage. And just for kicks there is also a picture of the Jet Stream in its very early days, notice the color of the Sky Tower. In the last picture, the same type of flume ride at Great Adventure, you can really see the hydrojump at the base of the drop The Hydro Jump

Here is another look at the MGM Grand Adventure park in its first version. Later the park was majorly changed. About 1/3 of the park was closed, including the back lot boat tour and the original Lightnin Bolt building, and it was converted into a large pool and convention center.

Yes at one time I was the owner of all the major rides that were in MGM. We bought the rides for a park that was planned for Seattle...that is a whole other post if you are interested in seeing that let me know. Anyways the rides were recently sold to Granite Park which is being built in Fresno. The coaster was pretty decent once it was added on to. It was quite short in it's Intamin carnation, the Arrow portion of the ride is the better part. Even though it was designed by Duell I thought MGM was a complete dud of a park, it was no surprise to me when they announced the closure. From my dealings with the park they had designed the park to handle 35,000 to 40,000 guests per day. They were lucky if they got 5,000.

The double chute was for capacity reasons. They could dispatch a boat of off the rotating platform every couple of seconds but they had to drop them down the double chute to space out the boats. Here take a look...

I believe those coaster pieces were from Opryland's Wabash Cannonball and Chaos and also the Black Widow from Riverside (SFNE)

I can't believe that new Drop Tower sign. It is pathetic. I am embarrassed for the creative department of Cedar Fair...So So So sad!

Gone but not Forgotten Unfortunately not all good things last forever. Here is a look at some brochures from parks that are no longer around. Sometimes we forget that these parks ever existed. I mean you just don't hear to much about Bob-Lo anymore. MGM Grand Adventures was a completely forgettable park and Ghost Town in the Sky, while it has recently reopened I have a look at it before it sat dormant for several years. There are also a couple of parks for our friends across the pond. Here is a look at some parks that are Gone but not Forgotten... Paging...Disney Legal Team????