Tanks4me05

Yes, clones happens a lot all around the world, not just Six Flags (particularly because engineering and producing an existing layout and slightly customizing it to fit the terrain of the park is significantly cheaper and quicker than to make a new ride from scratch. Also, traveling that far between parks just to stick with parks from a single chain simply is not worth it from a driving perspective. Not only (as you know) is the country massive, but you are missing a *huge* amount of other parks that are not owned by major chains and are just as amazing. I would like to suggest to stick to one region of the US and go from there. Go to rcdb.com to look up all coasters in the US (the whole world, actually; almost every single roller coaster that ever existed is on there, and the database is updated ever couple of days) to get a better idea of what's out there. That being said, to expedite those searching efforts, I (and the rest of the site) can help you out with what parks to go to and in what order. Just tell me what region of the US you would want to stick to and either how long you want your trip to last or how much you want to spend (a good rule of thumb, I would say, is $200 a day per person accounting for every expense.) Realize that the distance between parks may mean that a few days of the trip will be purely for driving.

I literally almost fell out of my chair.

Even though you've been to the US before, I don't quite think you realize how gigantic our country is. For example, I am going to make an example itinerary based off of your current route. I chose June 21st as the start day so I can get a reliable answer from park schedules. Actual time will vary as I have not chosen example hotels for you, and I am not accounting for breaks along the way. I used Expedia as the airline ticket booking agency to get example flight times. 6/21/14: Fly from Oslo Norway (local departure time: 11:10 AM) to Richmond VA (local arrival time: 6:30 PM.) Flight: 13 hours. 6/22/14: Kings Dominion from 10:30 AM to 10:00 PM. Drive to Washington, DC, arrive by 11:30 PM (not accounting for traffic; Washington DC and New York City are the worst/most dangerous places to drive in the US.) 6/23/14: Whatever you want in Washington, DC. 6/24/14: Six Flags Great Adventure from 10:30 AM to 9:00 PM. Drive to Manhattan, arrive by 10:30 PM (not accounting for traffic; Washington DC and New York City are the worst/most dangerous places to drive in the US.) 6/25/14: Whatever you want in NYC. 6/26/14: Driving Day: 6.5 hour drive from NYC to Niagara Falls. 6/27/14: Niagara Falls during the day, 4.5 hour drive to Cedar Point in the evening. 6/28/14: Day 1 at Cedar Point. (2 days recommended.) 6/29/14: Day 2 at Cedar Point; leave for Kings Island by 10:00 PM, arrive by 2:30 AM. 6/30/14: Kings Island. 7/1/14: Driving day: 5.5 hour drive from Kings Island to Six Flags Great America. 7/2/14: Six Flags Great America. 7/3/14: Driving day: 5.5 hour drive from Six Flags Great America to Six Flags St. Louis. 7/4/14: Six Flags St. Louis from 10:30 AM to 9:00 PM. Drive to Silver Dollar City, arrive by 12:30 AM. 7/5/14: Silver Dollar City from 9:30 AM to 7:00 PM. 7/6/14: Driving day: 7 hour drive from Silver Dollar City to Six Flags Over Texas. 7/7/14: Six Flags Over Texas, 10:30 AM to 10:00 PM. Drive to Six Flags Fiesta Texas, arrive by 2:30 AM. 7/8/14: Six Flags Fiesta Texas. 7/9/14: Schlitterbahn 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Drive to Houston, arrive by 10:30 PM. 7/10/14: Flight leaves for Houston 11:25 AM local time, arrives in Oslo 12:20 PM local time (next day, 7/11/14.) Total flight time: 18 hours. My recommendation would be to stay to one region of the United States to minimize your drive time.

Cloudy wouldn't have done anything, but being in the 40's makes a huge difference. IMO the minimum proper coaster riding temperature for a good ride is 65 - 70. The biggest factors that I can see from that are the increasing air density as the temperature lowers (which will therefore increase drag) as well as possibly the lubricants becoming more viscous (increasing wheel friction.) I don't know which factor is bigger though and I might be missing out on other factors. For a little background information, I rate my coasters no longer by place ranking or 0-10 scale, but by a tier scale, because I've gone on so many it's impossible to keep track of them individually. I have divided my preferences into the following: Tier 4 rides are utter crap (only a couple in this category,) Tier 3 rides are meh; they are alright, and they might be "enjoyable" or "fun" but their biggest draw is often getting the credit. Tier 2 rides are very solidly awesome, kick butt rides, and Tier 1 are my personal favorites (and I do have individual all time favorites.) Each tier is also further split into lower, middle, and upper regions. I have been on RoS in both 40 - 45 degree weather as well as 70 - 80 degree weather. On the hot days, it generally places in the middle Tier 1 category, but when it got cold, it was a middle Tier 3. When it's hot, it's comparable to Phantom's Revenge. But when it's cold, it's more like Intimidator at Carowinds. I highly suggest to go to SFNE one more time when it's at least 70 degrees. It's in the upper Tier 1 category for me.

^MATLAB is a professional engineering/mathematics program, is pretty much entirely useless for No Limits, and costs *TONS* of money. One of the big things about it is that it can solve a matrix of massive size (basically, you can solve thousands of equations with thousands of variables all at the same time.) As useful as it can be, I have very limited experience with programming, and my university's curriculum doesn't allocate enough time to teaching students how to learn the program as they should, so for mechanical engineers (like myself) who have very minimal experience with programming, learning MATLAB is a royal pain. I was just mentioning it because I dislike programming in general, and I know that MATLAB's programming language is technically pretty "simple."

^I sincerely hope that ample tutorials will be available. MATLAB is hard enough.

^Honestly, I thought it was really good. Rough for a B&M, but still good. That being said, I haven't gone since 2007, so my memory's a little fuzzy. Long story short, take all enthusiast's opinions with a grain of salt.

Skyrush. Back Left seat. The entirety of my legs might eventually turn purple from the bruising, but I won't care.

DelGrosso's Amusement Park (Tipton, PA; pretty small park but surprisingly nice) had some fantastic pizza that was better than Cesari's at Knoebels. That's probably because they make the dough right in front of you, and the sauce is their own as they are actually a tomato sauce company (the factory is right across the street from the park.)

EPA.. What coaster is this? It's the "Wild Wind," designed by Interpark. They made about a half dozen of them. IIRC, one of them is traveling the European fair circuit by the name of Xenox.

^Nope. I came across those (and I recognize the Scottish one) and those weren't it.

No, it was a full circuit coaster (and I am very well aware of PAX's models, this definitely wasn't one.) I'd like to say it had pale yellow track, and there were tall trees directly behind it. I remember one picture was a side view profile of the whole coaster, and another picture showed it in the right edge of the screen with a pathway mainly in focus. The track looked kinda like Soquet's track (at least the two vertical loops did, can't remember what the weird inversion looked like) but I looked through not only their entire rcdb repertoire, but also all of the lesser known companies as well and I couldn't find a thing.

Alright, so I remember seeing (perhaps on rcdb) some years ago that there was this one really weird coaster, where it consisted of two consecutive vertical loops, and a third inversion that was basically a loop but with a flat section of upside down track between the two loop halves, and that's it. I've been searching rcdb for hours and I couldn't find it. Of course, it's entirely possible that it was in a dream, because the memory itself is fuzzy, yet distinct. But this has been bugging me for a long time. Anyone wanna help?

The bigger lake is where they launch the fireworks IIRC. And plus I would have to assume that if the coaster station was built on the smaller island then you'd have issues because the general coaster would likely be too close to the fireworks to be safe. Plus you'd need a queue and exit line consisting of a bridge that would be over 300 yards in length, so not only would it be impractically expensive, it would also likely not garner much attendance because the guests have to walk really far just for one ride.

^^I actually do this for fun all the time (planning trips) so I can plan the whole thing for you right now. The east coast is actually the highest concentration of high quality roller coasters in the world. A good rule of thumb is that an amusement park trip will cost about $200 a day as I have found out, when including tickets, food, lodging, and gas. So I can actually plan the whole thing for you if you want, because I find that stuff really fun. (Google Earth is really freaking useful.) Also although I have been on over 230 roller coasters, I have never traveled farther west than Cedar Point in my life so I know the area well. First, I'll need a max budget you'd be willing to spend, average mileage of your car, and your hometown to calculate the general distance from home to your first park. (Don't need the specific address, just the city.) If you live really far outside the region, tell me what airport you want to fly out of (for car rentals, I recommend either intermediate or standard size as a good optimization between cost, fuel efficiency, and size protection in an accident.) EDIT: Also, the northeast has so many coasters, I personally split the northeast into the New England states (NY and CT up to ME) and the Mid Atlantic (PA down to VA) EDIT 2: I saw your own edits, so tell me which region you want to focus on, if you want to stay in SoCal, or if you want to venture out further, because you can actually make your way to Vegas and even cross over to Texas while using Cliff's in Albequerque as a stepping stone (but then you'd be able to do less in SoCal as a result if you aren't totally loaded with cash.) And when you'd like to do the trip would also be helpful as hotel costs and park hours vary.

The "problem" with the United States is that there are SO MANY good parks you cannot possibly do them all in one trip unless you are horrendously rich and have huge amounts of time. Also, the US is gigantic, so going from Missouri to California without any coasters would be an exhausting drive. I'd suggest you stick to a single region at a time. If for example, you REALLY wanted to do Six Flags Marine World and Mt. Olympus in one trip, you could. But I would suggest the following route in that case: Day 1: Mt. Olympus and Timber Falls Day 2: Drive 5 hours to Arnold's Park in Arnolds Park, IA. Day 3: Drive 7 hours across South Dakota, using the little amusement park "Boondocks" in Deadwood SD as a rest stop. Day 4: Drive 10 hours to Farmington, UT and stay overnight. Day 5: Lagoon Amusement Park in Farmington, UT. Day 6: Drive 10 hours to Vallejo, CA and stay overnight. Day 7: Six Flags Marine World.

On one hand, I don't trust the media and their tendency to totally skew what the truth really is, and how so many people actually believe it without looking for the facts for themselves. But on the other hand, we all know how short of an attention span we have. Just wait until we get the next bit of news on Edward Snowden and everyone except for her friends, family, and those who saw the event will have forgotten about it.

Speaking of the Topper Track, how smooth is Outlaw Run anyway? Is it El Toro smooth, GCII smooth, Gravity Group smooth, or B&M smooth? I've always been curious yet I won't have the opportunity to travel out of the GMT-5 Timezone for a while.

Doug, what's the full URL?

mmmmmmm.... 1600 feet. I can see those epic super long mountain terrain coasters from years past being reborn. I hope that ample tutorials will exist for the scripting. I know very little about code.

I had an idea for a one day trip: -Leave from home for Playland's Castaway Cove by 11:30 AM to get there by 1:00 PM when it opens. -Leave for Morey's by 3:00 PM to get there by 4:00 PM, and stay until midnight when the piers close. -Drive home promptly after and get back by 3:00 AM. I can stay up that late without much trouble. My question is that is 2 hours for Playland and 8 hours for Wildwood (excluding most water rides; I am generally not interested in them and I have a camera with me that I don't want destroyed) enough to do everything? Going on a weekday is very much within the realm of possibilities, so what day would have the lightest crowds?

There's no way that the airtime off the first drop abides by ASTM G force regulations....

This is interesting. I'll have to learn more about this. Yes, I do like comfortably rough wooden coasters. To me there is a difference between comfortably rough and down right painful. For instance Thunderhawk at Dorney is not bad rough to me at all but Predator at Darien Lake is too rough for me. You must not have gone to DL since 2009 then. When Predator got Voyage's new trains, it helped quite a bit, and now it's about as rough as KD's Grizzly.

Maybe by the locals who go to the county fairs. I don't think they will have the same reputation by coaster enthusiasts, because of so many more major, permanent parks in the US, but I don't think they will be frowned upon. Plus insane carnival coasters are stereotyped with Germany, so no I don't think they'll have the same reputation, although I think the US could use a few more Schwarzkopf-like coasters in their county fairs. I think the problem in the US is basically because there are a relatively small number of rather large companies that don't care about the upkeep and innovation, as opposed to Germany and Western Europe in general where the fair scene is dominated by smaller, family owned companies that need to keep their rides clean, pretty, insane, and have to keep bringing new rides in to keep people coming.

The picture with the flowers in the foreground and with Racer and Log Jammer in the background has the potential to be a fantastic photo, however the exposure was set far too high. If you used manual exposure mode on your camera (assuming your camera is good enough to have that option) you should have dialed it down until you got a rich blue in the sky, but not so rich that the flowers get too dark to see.