Tanks4me05

^Oh yeah. But now that I think of it, it looks more akin to (and much more successful than) that failed "Vertigo" concept that was at Walibi Belgium a few years back: http://rcdb.com/3457.htm?p=16418

Interesting. Simple, yet effective. Does anyone know if the starts and stops were strictly part of the testing cycle, or is that an actual program?

End of June, (roughly June 21st or so, give or take a week) I'll be visiting my uncle, going to Dorney Park, and I'll go shooting with him. I might do a trip report, I haven't done one of those in a long time.

Yamaha Racing Coaster

I'd say SDL, Trailblazer, and Sidewinder. Roller Soaker has so low capacity, over the last nine years I've been at the park, I have yet to get on Roller Soaker because the lines are ridiculous.

^Gerstlauer was founded by a former employee of Schwarzkopf. Before Schwarzkopf's bankruptcy, they supplied electric and pneumatic equipment to Schwarzkopf. Afterwards, they took up the company's old facilities. Now they regularly refurbish Schwarzkopf's remaining coasters.

^I think I emailed the park, wondering if they were considering to add large piers and IIRC they said that though they still have plenty of space, that wasn't off the table. If the roller coaster capital of the world wants to keep that title in the long run, that's their only choice anyway.

^I'm really amazed at how Hersheypark is able to fit twelve (technically thirteen, Lightning Racer is not a mobius coaster) a full sized water park, dozens of flat rides all in about seventy acres and still manages to make the vast majority of the park gorgeous.

^^Hmmmm... that's actually an ingenious solution.

^Length means naught to a point. Storm Runner has a little over half the ride time, yet has been my #1 steel coaster for the eighth year running now. I wouldn't worry. And besides, it would be ridiculously hard to stuff any more track into that area anyway, let alone for a hyper with a wider reach envelope than most.

That dirt road they built in the middle of the river for the construction vehicles: Now that they are finishing up, are they going to make it even with the original river bed or are they just going to fill it back up as is when they are done?

I don't know either. Although I do like this logo, IMO the "old" new one was better. And they haven't changed the logo on their main site yet, so it still might not be legit.

^It's the G's that's most important. mv^2 / r. As long as the turns are tight enough that's all that matters. Well, I'm a Mechanical Engineering student, and instead of four semesters of Calculus, we have three semesters and differential equations. So, what happened to that fourth semester? Semesters 2 and 3 are stuffed into semester 2, the one I'm currently taking. I work my butt off on the questions, I'm now getting a paid tutor, and I am still struggling with so many of the questions. It's ridiculous. I get most of the concepts, but I'm so happy that the majority of what's pissing me off will be done by CAD programs, Excel, MATLAB, etc. But for the time being, I'm going nuts.

^What do you mean NOT one I'd share? I have close to no sense of shame, so that would be the first one I'd share. And you can still see the graphite residue, so I guess the experience was akin to what I would guess going to a super shady tattoo parlor would be.

Nope. I'm not sure if I can remember even riding a tumble bug. (I might have.) Do you play Mass Effect?

Hmmmm... the entrance and exit on the same side will probably cause an increase in traffic under normal circumstances and station configurations, however, I can't see the station in itself, so hopefully they didn't have to compromise with the ability to move in the station thanks to a lack of space on the other side of the station. ^^I think seeing the last piece of track being put into place will be a very nice birthday present for me if it does actually get put in tomorrow.

^^^ It worked much better in the website's text editor, because it didn't actually skip spaces there. ^^^^With a single zip line, you can have the ride run parallel to the ski lift and inclined railway, below tree level, or roughly tree level, and all that would be visible would be a single steel cable and the riders going down it. I'm going to bet that the park won't be able to afford to make the individual stations architecturally pleasing, though I would not be against the idea of theming each station like an old ghost town style building like what's at the top of the mountain. And also, how else would they go up or down the mountain? I agree that a higher capacity is always a good thing, but there can be several potential flaws in that concept: Let's say that instead of a single 3,000 foot zip line, the park builds four separate 800 foot zip lines going down the mountain all in line. The zip line at the bottom is zip line #1, and the one at the top is #4. If you wanted to do zip line #3, you'd have to do zip line #4. Or, if you did zip line 4 and it was too scary for you, you have no choice but to do it three more times in order to get back down the mountain, because making a pathway or a bunch of stairs down that far would not be a good idea. Or if you were at the ground level, and you wanted to do zip line #3, you'd have to take the chair lift or inclined railway up, and do the whole course anyway for the same reasons. The only way to make that configuration feasible would be to require each person to go through all four zip lines, then they would have to unhook and re-hook every single time, which although the trip itself would take one fourth as long, the hooking process would take much longer. And take a look at this zip line: It's about 3000 feet long, and lasts about a minute, which isn't that long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGn3EQohmOI (Start at about 2:20.) As I look at the end station, it wouldn't be as much of an eyesore as I thought, so I stand corrected on that point. Two zip lines side by side roughly at tree level like the NY example I have seems okay, I'm not sure about a four wide one, as the swath of trees cut away might also be an eyesore. (I'm also trying to think from the conservative small town mayor's point of view who wants to keep their small town like a small town.)

^I see your point, but it would also be a lot more expensive to make those multiple stations, especially if those stations are level, you would have to make a significant amount of supports and flooring, etc. for each of those stations, and IMO it would be a major eyesore and wouldn't fit well with the theme of the park if there's a giant hunk of zipline and stations running down the cliff doing this: (side view, the slashes are the steep portion of the mountain, the minus signs are the stations, the periods are the less steep portion of the mountain, and the I's are station supports. \ \ \ \----------- \IIIIIIIIIII .IIIIIIII IIIIIIII . . . . . .---------- IIIIIIIII IIIIIII . . . . .---------- IIIIIIIII IIIIII . . . . .---------- IIIIIIIII IIIIII .

If the zip line runs parallel to the chairlift and has the same length as it, the zip line would be about 3024 feet long, and 1282 feet high. Less than half the length of the world's longest zip line, but still pretty freaking impressive. And after looking up the park on the thrillnetwork database, apparently there are only 11 rides discounting the Incline Railway, though I counted over two dozen buildings (that count may be inaccurate, Google Earth's imaging of the park isn't the clearest/newest) which is less than I thought it would be from a ride perspective. There may be a chance that this place will get fixed up to a decent working order after all by this summer. I'm placing a bit more hope into it than I did in the past.

Only one broken bone. 2003, age = 10. My right pinkie toe. Story: I was sitting in the basement, and I spontaneously got up and ran to the stairs. I accidentally rammed the leg of the couch between my two outermost toes. Since I had/have a ton of lego and K'nex in the basement, I stepped on them frequently. This was about as painful as that, i.e. painful and not fun, but not immobilizing, and felt better after about half a minute. However, after a few minutes, I realized I couldn't move my toe back to its normal position, as it was sticking out about 45 degrees to the right. So I went up stairs, and asked "Mom, is this normal?" and showed it to her. However, I have a few other interesting stories. 2005, age = 12. My right foot. I was preparing to go to Seabreeze with my family and my godparents' family, packing some legos for the trip to keep the then 8 year old "godbrohter" occupied on the 90 minute trip. I learned about a year before that toothpicks were good substitutes for K'nex coaster rail splicers when the real ones weren't available. So I used a lot of those, and a lot of them were lying around. So as I was walking around in the basement barefoot, my foot ran into something quite sharp. I look at my foot, and I see the toothpick stuck inside. I pull it out, hoping to have the whole thing intact. It wasn't. When my godmother came over, she tried digging around for about 25 minutes. It was incredibly painful, and she didn't get anywhere. After that, we went to my doctor's office, and after 20 minutes of more digging around and two painkiller injections, he finally got out the piece about five minutes before he gave up and sent me to the emergency room. A piece of wood at least half an inch long was pulled out. Though I couldn't go to Seabreeze for fear of infection (Seabreeze has a water park) we went to Coney Island because my family went to NYC about a week later. 2010, age = 16. My butt. I was sitting on the school bus one frigid morning in February. I decided to arch my back to stretch a little, because I sat on crappy pleather, virtually padding-less seats for nearing an hour and a half a day, five days a week, 180 days a year. I then felt a sharp pain in my butt, again not debilitating. I then remembered that I had a pencil in my back pocket. So as I grabbed the pencil I was thinking "Please have the tip still on there, please have the tip still on there." I look at the pencil, and I think to myself "...aaaand there's no tip on there." I went to the nurse's office that morning, and after about 20 minutes of digging around, she got about half of the wood tip out. Though I figured there must have been the other half of the wood and the graphite still in there, but she said she couldn't see anything. Since she had a better view than I did, I believed her. But after about three weeks, it started to get pretty swollen and infected, so obviously there was something still in there. So we went to my doctor (the same one as the toothpick) and after a while he got the other piece of wood out, and I was given antibiotics which I took for three weeks. The swelling did go down dramatically, however it didn't go away completely. So, about two weeks after I was done with the antibiotics, I felt like squeezing the remaining bump, and the lead painlessly popped out. So a pencil was stuck in my butt for two months.

^After being on Steel Force many times and two B&M hypers (Behemoth and Nitro) I can say with confidence that you needn't worry. Steel Force rides pretty similarly to Nitro. The airtime intensity and frequency is a notch or two higher than Nitro, but the ride itself is a bit rougher (though far from uncomfortable.)

^^I'm surprised that I keep getting those days. I have been at Dorney Park almost every year for the past ten years, and every single visit has at least half of the coasters with a wait of ten minutes or less.

Getting harassed by the same TSA employee multiple times. What's worse than a hag fish swimming up your butt for a snack?

I'm hoping that this park will survive somehow. It always looked like one of America's most unique parks. After looking up the site on Google Earth, they would be incredibly hard pressed to expand; they're virtually landlocked as it already is if they aren't too willing to either build attractions into the steep cliff-face or excavate into the terrain to create some level ground for flat rides and buildings. By the way, knowing TPR's semi-immature, college-like sense of humor, I'm surprised that so few people picked up on the epic-ness of Ghost Town in the Sky's acronym.

^I've never really cared for Lady Gaga, but one of my friends I met in college has met her on several occasions, and from the stories I heard about her and her encounters, etc. I was actually very surprised to know how selfless she really is. She is *HYPER* dedicated to her fans, a major anti-bullying supporter, etc.