Scaparri

You lost like 150 cool points when I saw you wearing that FSU shirt, but then you went... and TOTALLY REDEEMED YOURSELF, and earned like 250 cool points with your caption. Well done. Great TR dude.

What's the freakin' point in trying if I'm just going to get dicked over by something completely out of my power!?!? No matter how hard I try, I can't win!! It's like the harder I try, the worse I do! I've never put so much effort into something, only to do so lousy. If I gave the same amount of effort somewhere else, I would be on the freakin' Dean's List! I have had absolutely no social life this semester trying to make really good grades, but my profs just won't let me win. So what's the freaking point anymore? Why should I even try? No matter what I do, I still fail. It's obviously a sign from God or something. Screw this crap. I freakin' give up. I can't do this anymore.

^Yes! Hooray for one final left, also! And Hooray, I got into the University of Alabama today for transfer next semester! Now I just have to wait to hear from Kentucky to figure out what I'm going to do!

You and me both, dude. I had always loved the ride until somebody told me that I needed to ride in the 3rd row. That was one of the single worst coaster rides I have ever had. The pain was so extreme. I thought my femurs were going to shatter over every hill. Ever since, I just stick to the back half of the train. I've never really had a problem back there. As for other rides I think are overrated: Mummy (USF)- I had heard so many people talk about how great of a ride it is and that I had to do it. Yeah, it was a fun ride, but it wasn't anything that overly impressed me. Granted, I did only get one ride on it. But given that one ride, I'd much rather have a ride on something like Italian Job. Wildcat (Hershey)- I have seen this coaster in so many top ten lists and heard so many people talk about how it's one of the best GCI's. Again, it's a fun ride, but nothing about it wowed me. The first drop was pretty sweet, but then the ride didn't do anything that spectacular. Everything was fairly predictable and there was absolutely no GCI airtime to be found. Maybe I just had a bad ride on it though.

It's finals week. I really should stop wasting my time arguing why Millennium Force is not the greatest coaster known to man and start studying more.

What more substance do you want, other than specific rides which I'm about to give you? I mentioned specific characteristics (or lack there of) of the ride, i.e. straight track, lack of intensity, no airtime. Honestly, I have a lot of rides that I feel are better, but I'll name a few: Phantom's Revenge. It has a crazy twisting first drop, followed by a 230 ft drop into a ravine, through a wooden coaster, then back through the same wooden coaster, and then through a series of bunny hops with downright violent airtime. That's my kind of ride. Storm Runner is another. Intense launch, followed by a huge hill with a vertical drop, which goes into some of the most insane and unique inversions in the country. Others include, but not limited to: Goliath (SFOG), Montu, Kumba, Dueling Dragons, Raptor, Maverick, and those are just some of the steel coasters. Yeah, I'll hand you that. As I said in my original post, I love the ride. I used to consider it to be my #1. But after I rode it enough times, the novelty of the speed and height wore off slightly and I realized that's about all it has going for it. It doesn't matter if they aren't anything like MF when you are arguing that there is no coaster better than it. Half of your argument is based around it's "uniqueness" anyway. First, MF only has three hills. Second, the speed over the hills doesn't make a lick of difference if the concavity of the hill crests is spread out enough. To me, diving 230 ft into a ravine THROUGH a wooden coaster and then hugging the terrain (there's no 5ft to it, it's ON the ground) at 85 mph, before shooting back up through the woodie again is unique. To me, getting launched out of my seat and getting whipped through an inline twist while mid-air is unique (the inline twist right before the unique snake dive on SR). BUT, I'm going to call myself out. Those statements began with "To ME...", which brings me to my last point.... I think you hit the nail on the head there. Everybody has their own preferences. A lot of people think I'm insane because I love Gwazi. To each his own. Anyway, I'm not trying to start anything. You wanted substance, and I gave substance. So maybe we should just agree to disagree.

I've ridden tons of coasters that aren't top 10 rides and can honestly say that MF is no way the best. Yeah, MF is a great ride. I honestly really like it, but it is by no means the end-all-be-all of coasters. Once you get over the awesome drop and the speed, you start to realize how somewhat bland and not very intense it is. There is a ton of straight track, almost all the turns are very elongated with very gradual, smooth transitions, and the hills give 'floater air' at best, and that's on a good day. Like I said, I really do love the ride. It's a great, 'fun' coaster. But at the end of the day, I can't say that it's better than all of the coasters I've been on that give ejector air, crazy intense g's and transitions, or an overall out-of-control ride.

This is good to hear. I've been hoping that when I finally make it out to SoCal this park will still be open. Hopefully, with this news, I won't have to worry anymore.

"Is It Any Wonder" by Keane

What kind of kid thinks Disney World isn't cool? Especially first graders! When I was growing up, that's something you bragged about, no matter how old you were! And what kind of kid thinks getting lunch at school is cool!? I mean, most of the kids were jealous that I brought my lunch back in first grade! It was better than the crap they served in the cafeteria. Anyway, that's really sad. Sorry to hear that your son is going through that. Kids are just cruel. I like to think envy really is the root of the problem, because what kid doesn't freakin' love WDW and what kid would rather eat school cafeteria slop than a lunch from home? I hope he can understand that and have a good time on your trip. The trips my family took to WDW are some of the best memories from my childhood.

^From what I understand, no. The guy working at the gate made it sound like that for whatever reason, they just weren't opening the park last night, but that it would be open again today. But if you're going, again, I would call ahead. I'll never make that mistake again.

Well, I went tonight and learned a valuable lesson: Call the freakin' park before you go. I reserved a non-refundable hotel room and drove 250 miles down to the park, only to find out that they weren't opening the park and the only thing we could do was drive around through the lights... still at the price of $15 per car. That wasn't frustrating in the least. I guess I learned my lesson though. At least the gate worker was really nice.

Wes, no matter how good I think my TR's might be, your TR's always manage to prove that they actually suck something wicked. That video was just awesome.

"Closer to Our Graves"- Lucky Boys Confusion

"Swans"- The Format

Wow, I've never actually seen a picture of the first drop on Boulder Dash. It's crazy how built into the mountain it really is. Thanks for the pics!

Dude, don't you just love those dumps? The ones where you feel like you dropped 10 lbs? Those are the best. Seriously, Robb, this weight loss has been beyond impressive. I never doubted your ability to lose it, but I doubted the possibility of losing weight that fast. I lost 55 lbs in 9 months once and everybody thought THAT was ridiculously fast. Well, you've already lost almost half the weight I did in less than a month. That's so awesome dude. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, as far as coasters go, I don't really get scared anymore. I have become immune to most heights and speeds (on coasters). Drop rides tend to scare me, but I'm becoming more and more immune to those too. Large or fast water slides scare the hell out of me though. I don't deal well with not being strapped into anything or not having anything to hold on to if I'm not strapped in. Nevertheless, I still do almost any water slide.

^Yeah, definitely. Thanks dude! As if I wasn't already excited about Evel Knievel, that gets me even more pumped given their near identical layouts.

Yeah, but can that really be avoided? There has to be a degree of negligibility no matter what. Even on rides that generally considered by all to be great, if you know there is a specific area of the train that gives a better ride in than the other areas (say, the back half, or the right side, etc), you're probably going to be more inclined to ride in that area, right? So you are going to get a better ride which will make you think higher of it, right? There are very few coasters that give the same quality of ride in every seat. Sure, some may vary less than others, but almost every seat is different. Furthermore, every ride is different. A coaster ride in 60 degree weather is going to be very different than a ride on the same coaster in 90 degree weather. It's going to be very different if it's wet as opposed to dry, or day as opposed to night, or a half-full train as opposed to a full train. Keeping all that in mind, I highly doubt that everybody is going to rank their coasters based on the 'average ride'. I know I generally don't. Besides, to do that, wouldn't you have to ride every coaster in similar weather conditions with similar capacity, and ride multiple times in various parts of the train? Again, my point is that there always has to be a degree of negligibility and error with these, because nobody is going to rank their list using identical criteria. Hmm, interesting. So what exactly makes somebody who didn't rank The Beast at #1 an idiot? What exactly did you experience on The Beast that made your rides so far superior to those of everybody else who has ridden it?

Where did you ride on Thunder Run? In the eleven years I have been going to the park, I have never had a ride on it that was anywhere near pain rough.

Here's my list: [1] The Voyage [2] Thunderhead [3] Avalanche [4] Hades [5] Phoenix [6] Shivering Timbers [14] Raven [15] Cornball Express

Wow, I never thought about that, but it makes sense. Fortunately for me, I'm a cheapskate so I just stay in the 1 star hotels that give you the plastic cups in packages. No worries there.

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed Avalanche didn't break the top 10, but there's stiff competition. It's gets the nod for the #3 position in my ride count. My biggest surprises: -Balder slips to #5 -Thunderbird in the 10 spot. I don't doubt this, I just didn't realize it was so well liked. I knew it was a good ride, but I had never heard anybody give it a complete rave review. -Cheetah at #118. How!? How is it not in the bottom 10!?

Is it bad that I still don't buy into it? I mean, sure, there are disorders that make it harder to burn fat, or make it harder to exercise, but I think the degree of severity is almost always blown out of proportion and used as an excuse. Have you ever heard of somebody who gave an honest, hard effort to lose weight and didn't? In every case I've ever seen, whether it's a person I know, a story I've read, or a special on TV about obesity, the people who get bigger just don't put enough effort into it. If you legitimately have something wrong with you, wouldn't that be motivation to take action against it? A few close family friends have all been severely overweight for years (they are in the same family). Well, they all started dieting and exercising more, and all of them have lost at least 50 lbs. My family has little bit of a history with obesity too, which has caused problems with my brother and I. We have both been considerably overweight in our lifetimes, and we've both lost considerable amounts of weight. Our metabolisms just suck. But what do we do? We have self control. We both eat as healthy as we can and exercise as much as we can. Sure, it might "suck," but it's the price you have to pay. Now obviously we weren't nearly as overweight as the lady in the picture (though a few of those family friends weren't too far away), and I know that my personal experiences and observations don't vouch for the entire population. But again, have you ever known somebody who put in a legit effort and didn't lose weight? It's about self-control and will power. I'm not trying to sound like a dick. If somebody can show me evidence that proves my theory wrong, I would really like to see it (I'm not doubting that it's out there). Anyway, I should probably shut up. I feel like I'm becoming a catalyst for an argument/taking this thread completely off topic.