Scaparri

You have to eat 12 chicken wings made with their hottest sauce (Blazin' sauce, which is made from habanero oil) in under 6 minutes, without drinking or eating anything else. You also can't touch your face (the sauce that gets on and around your mouth REALLY burns your skin). The first three or four were pretty brutal, but after that, your mouth just kind of went numb.

Yeah, I hate to sound insensitive, but I have no doubt that most of this was written with their lawyer, and some of the stuff seems just a little far-fetched, or like they are just selectively remembering things. I'm sorry, I know Six Flags hasn't always been known for having the most attentive workers, but there are ride ops who have to push buttons at the base of the tower. If there were literally cables falling everywhere just twenty feet above the ground, then they would have been getting hit or at least seen the cables as well. And any moron would have known to hit the e-stop had this truly happened. Then it's just funny how she so vividly recalls the park's pediatrician wearing a baseball hat, t-shirt, swim trunks, and sandals. It's almost as if the lawyer is trying to get her to make the park look as unprofessional as possible. She later mentions how they were grabbing her by the legs when she had a broken femur, as if she's, again, trying to make the park look unprofessional. I know that this was an awful incident that was terrible for her, her family and her friends. I'm not insensitive to that. But I'm sure they are being selective in their memory to better help their case.

^I agree. It's not like they are stealing a theme, or like a coaster has never been painted those colors before. Sometimes I feel like people just enjoy finding something to complain about. -Scott "Those Fuji-Q bastards TOTALLY ripped off Ninja" P.

Sorry to say that this is a common misconception, there are older coaster that uses tubular steel track. No one as large as Matterhorn but there still is some older, check RCDB. Actually, I think you have the misconception. There are plenty of steel coasters that are older than the Matterhorn, but none of them use(d) tubular steel track. Most all of them use(d) track made with flat, I-beam rails.

We had 12, PLUS a spoonful of cinnamon. WIN. That was a wild night. Though, the back of the shirts should be revised to say "It's like walking on hot coals. Except you eat 'em... and crap 'em." It was well worth it though.

^^Eh, not necessarily. I remember about 10 years ago, there was a lot of talk and rumors about inverted stand ups. Most people came to the conclusion that there would be a small ledge that the riders stood on. That would make the most sense. Not that I think I ride of that type will ever come out. Stand ups are passed their time. Nothing ground breaking, but I'd like to see: -Inverted Intamin Rocket Coasters -Intamin Rocket Coasters with a beyond vertical drop -A little more experimentation with inversions on looping coasters. I feel like the loop on SOB was a pretty solid idea, but it was carried out poorly. I don't think they should try anything too crazy, but it'd be cool see to a few more companies take a few more stabs at loops and maybe even a corkscrew. Does anybody remember Setpoint's Seismic concept? That was one idea I thought would take off and they never even got a prototype built. It was a standard looping coaster, only the track was fairly large and instead of having one train run on top of the track, it had two trains running on the sides. It was pretty much a racing, looping coaster that ran on one track line. It's a shame that nobody ever bought one.

Or, you could just cram your cooler full, get your hand stamped, and walk out to the car for 15 minutes to eat. -If you don't want to pack a cooler, leave the park for thirty minutes to an hour, drive right down the street to the nearest McDonald's, and rape the dollar menu. -Always get water to drink. It's free and will hydrate you far better than sodas. -Thoroughly check park websites or area newspapers and such for any possible discount you can get. Most parks offer some sort of discount if you buy tickets online, and a lot of parks will have promotions like $10 if you bring a can of pepsi or coke or something. I found a $10 off coupon for Kennywood at the Pennsylvania Welcome Center. Discounts are everywhere. -Don't worry about Q-bots unless you are really worried you won't get everything in. -Take friends and split everything. You'd be amazed how cheap trips can be when gas and lodging is split 2, 3, 4 ways. -Priceline.com is your very good friend. Go there, make sweet love, and get $100 hotel rooms for $30 a night. -And Six Flags or Cedar Fair season passes are an obvious one.

^That's exactly the opposite of what they are going for. I honestly would love to see this park (and most other parks for that matter) stop worrying about records all together and just build awesome, quality rides. Look at some of the highest ranked coasters in the world... SROS (SFNE), Expedition GeForce, Balder, El Toro, Nemesis; with the exception of the degree of El Toro's drop, none of those rides broke any records, but they are considered the best rides in the world. I could care less about records anymore. Just give me quality.

Shane, you are a saint. That footage of The Bat was insane. Plus, it was nice to seem some good footage way before Paramount/Cedar Fair bastardized the place. And that's an awesome pic of the suspended corkscrew! I always figured it was just a model concept. I had no idea they actually built a prototype test corkscrew. I always thought the concept was awesome, but figured there's no way it could ever be financial realistic for a park.

Awesome! Thanks for the Great America stuff! Much like how people have a 'second home', SFGAm is my 'second home park', simply because I have spent so much time there and in the Chicago area. It's crazy how much of the Whizzer you can see in the background of that picture with the carousel. Great stuff!

Bob Knight just resigned from Texas Tech with little to not warning. Unbelievable. I think I'm going to go throw a chair in the General's honor.

One of the exact cars for X2 was being shown off at S&S's booth at IAAPA in November, so I imagine it's probably their design.

^That part was a joke though: It was a joke.

I got dicked over so hard on my exams last week. I'm so freakin' tired of this. No matter what I do, I can't win. I'm seriously on the brink of just giving this up and saving what face I can. I just have no idea what to do anymore.

^How did it really cost them $2800?

^Touche. I kind of forgot about that.

It seems sort of odd that they built the entire ride in less than six months, and now it's supposed to take six months just to paint the ride, add new trains, and add tunnels with some effects. Granted, I'm just frustrated because it's not going to be open when I'm there this spring. Still, it seems a little ridiculous. Nevertheless, I'm still glad that SF is actually making such an effort to improve an existing ride.

Awesome TR, dude! Those kangaroo pictures were awesome. That's wild they let you just hang around them like that. I think the wombat might seriously be my new favorite animal. Lookin' forward to the updates!

Thanks for the link! It's good to see they are finally getting major work done on this! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll be open by March 23rd, when I'll be there.

Yeah, now that you guys bring it up, I remember it too. It was an old Vekoma concept from about five years back.

Wow, I just skeeted a little after seeing those new renderings. I'm a huge race fan, so I'm already stoked about this ride, but if they really add the tarmac, wall, and catch fence theming to it, I'm not going to know what to do with myself. This really makes me want to go to the German GP in '09.

^^If you're talking about realistic conditions on a coaster, then weight will have an effect on the speed, and the angle will have a negligibly small effect on the speed. The more weight a train has, the more momentum it carries, so it will push through air easier than it would if it were lighter. Technically, angle does matter, because a less steep drop is going to require more track to travel the desired vertical distance. More track is going to increase the total friction between the train and the track. However, the loss of speed from the increased friction on one drop is going to be very negligible, so it doesn't really matter much at all. On the flip side though, in a frictionless world, neither the weight or the angle is going to make a difference.

"Mighty to Save"- Hillsong United

8/10 for me.

^Yeah, but in his defense, the Fav Gerstlauer Spinn category was just recently added. It was missing the first few days the poll was up. And even though it's been added now, THBS at SFFT and Timberland Twister are still specifically listed on the ballot itself, not just the category description.