robbalvey

Ok, I know it's kind of simple and basic, but I added the feature that turns the number of replies on each forum index page into a link that shows you who posted in each thread and how many times. Just thought it was a neat little feature that should be added. --Robb "Always trying to improve the boards!" Alvey

Thats nothing we had a 6.1 that day Zane "It was at 4.09 am" Williams Of course it was nothing...I never said it was something. It was only a 3.6 and hardly anyone felt it. --Robb "It was just interesting that it was near SFMM!" Alvey

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/119-34.html Looks like we got a 3.6 in Valencia today. Too bad no one I know felt it! --Robb "Hoping a 10.5 wipes out SFMM!" Alvey

While I don't have an answer for you about the Easter thing, I will certainly say that the more rides you can get on Goliath the better! Also, one thing I was going to ask - we noticed when we were there in 2002 that Goliath seemed to have more airtime towards the front of the train. Have other people found this to be true also? Hope you can get an answer to your questions. --Robb

^ No, that was what became the Shiny team working at Virgin. Basically the team that did Aladdin later went on to do Earthworm Jim 1 & 2. Then that team broke up after those games and one half stayed at Shiny, the other half created "Neverhood." --Robb

^ Understood. I mean, if it was real, then yeah, I would have disqualified it. But it's another reason why our videos to carry a "PG-13" equivalent rating and I'm glad to see that you're being careful what you show to kids. --Robb

http://www.news-leader.com/today/20050312-Launchedlikearo.html Here's a partial quote: Click the link above for the rest of the article and some photos. --Robb "Can't wait!" Alvey

First I will say happy Birthday to Tiki Steve - how lucky you are to share a b-day with my woman! Then I will say Happy Birthday to Elissa....damn you're getting old! :shock: And finally, happy birthday to the TPR boards! We are one month old today! Yay! --Robb

^ The taking a leak part was 'staged.' He wasn't really taking a leak. I asked Hope about that. There was already some water or something running down the wall and the guy went and stood in front of it. There's a LOT of stuff Elissa and I do in our photos and videos also that make it "look" like we're doing stuff, but we're not. --Robb "If he was really peeing on a wall, I would have disqualified that." Alvey

I can't believe I didn't catch this one earlier.... If you can't even spell the topic title correctly, and can't be bothered to capitalize the first letter of a sentance....don't post here. Topic titles with obvious misspelled words will be instantly closed or deleted, especially considering the original poster has the ability to edit their mistakes! --Robb "I don't mean to sound harsh, but I just want boards that people can read." Alvey

^ Understood! We're both really wiped out right now! I knew that if I didn't put up the photos and TR tonight, it probably wouldn't get done until next weekend! --Robb

^^ See, and I can't understand why people don't LOVE it! To me it's the PERFECT dark ride. It's got guest interation, which I think makes the difference between an average dark ride and an AWESOME dark ride. The gun system seems to work REALLY well too. Although I will say that my biggest 'gripe' with the game system is that I didn't do very well the first few times I rode it, and I didn't get any feedback as to why. But once you figure out that shooting targets higher up, farther away, etc, it becomes a LOT more fun. One thing to know about the ride, though is NEVER stand in line for it! Yeah, it's not worth a 45 minute wait...NO dark ride is worth that wait, IMO. But it's got one of the BEST single rider lines EVER! Since each car is two rows of three, and they load four cars at a time, it seems that almost every other car needs a single rider. So we've seen the normal line be well over an hour, and only have to wait 5 minutes in the single rider line. Another thing I like about it is the subject matter. While MiB wasn't the greatest of movies, it really was a "fun" movie. Thus, it's a really "fun" theme to the ride. Goofy alien creatures tied around a funky premise. And you get to shoot stuff, and spin, and shoot more stuff! I dunno, I just really love the ride. It's something I look forward to every visit to USO. But again, I can totally see why after waiting 45 minutes you'd go "huh?" Try it next time with single riders, go round and round a few times, and maybe you'll see what all the fuss is about. --Robb

^ Getting them in a week is EASY! Hell, getting them in a DAY is easy! Here are the main coasters on the strip: - Manhurtin' Express: NY, NY Hotel. There is rarely ever a line anymore, especially mid week. Go there, pay your $14 and ride! I *think* they offer re-rides for 1/2 price now. - Canyon Blaster: Grand Slam Canyon (or whatever they are calling it now). This is actually a really cool place and we usually spend a good couple of hours here every visit. You don't get very wet at all on the "Rim Rummer" (gotta love that name!) and they have some decent flats. - Speed: The Ride: since there isn't anything else here at the NASCAR Cafe, go pay your $12 (or whatever it is now) and get your ride. They do offer an all day wristband for about $20, and Speed is actually pretty decent, or at least it was the last time I rode, so it's a good deal if you want to ride a few times. - High Roller: I haven't been up to the Stratosphere in quite some time, but I'm sure we might go on our next visit. Big Shot is still REALLY awesome, and from what I hear the two new rides are scary as hell! High Roller is weak, but kind of funny. You might want to plan some time here to ride a few things. - Desperado: It's about a 30-40 minute drive from the strip. Well worth going to, even though the coaster isn't what it used to be. Plan 2 hours here. The other two credits are at Peter Piper's Pizza and LV Mini Grand Prix. Both are just kiddies and they are about 10 minutes away from each other. You can easily get in both credits in about 30 minutes. Consult RCDB for locations of those places. Hope this is the info you're looking for! --Robb

LOL! Not the best photoshop job there, but we get the idea! I'm not the best at Photoshopping stuff, but it would be funny to see if anyone else could come up with their versions of the castle! --Robb

Nice pics! Thanks for posting the report! --Robb "Carowinds is my 2nd favorite Paramount park behind PKD" Alvey

Solace Weekend Photos HERE: http://www.themeparkreview.com/solace2005/solace1.htm Hey everyone! Solace is over and now it's photo and trip report time! Overall, the weekend was REALLY good. Knott's was as expected, Magic Mountain actually exceeded my expectations, and Universal was just plain FUN! Our weekend started on Friday night meeting up with some people from Westcoaster at Buca's. Fun night, good dinner, but we were both pretty tired so we turned in. The highlight of Friday was Joey paying up for his portion of the Europe trip! And it wasn't in huge bags of pennies!!! The next morning we arrived at Knott's at 8:03. Just three minutes past when free parking expired and the lady in the booth made DAMN SURE we knew that, too. What a great way to start the day! We arrived to the reception area to find two girls who looked like they had either just come off of a 24 hour bender with Cheech and Chong, or wait...that's just the typical expressions on the faces of the park's guest relations. After looking at our information and seeing the park couldn't even spell the name of their new coaster correctly, this lack of any intelligence greeting guests didn't surprise us in the least! For some reason they ran out of lanyards and we managed to get the last two. While we were there another guy walked up to get his packet of information and the conversation went something like this: Random ACEr dude "Hey, I'd like to get my stuff." Stoned Knott's chicks "We ran out of lanyards." ACer: "Ok....can you tell me what the schedule is?" Stoned chicks: "We don't know...read the flyer or something...BTW, do you have any brownies?" Anyway, off to the park we go. We were both anxious to ride XLR8R since last year it was only running one train and it was a 45 minute wait. There wasn't any Silver Bullet or Ghostrider ERT, so XLR8R was the 'newest' ride in the park open for us, since they didn't have anything like RipTide or Revolution open either. Not a big deal, really...but it does show how Solace really has changed from an "event" from past year's to 'just a couple hours of coasters open before and after the park' now. Makes sense, though, in the theme of how Knott's has as devolved over the past 5 years, the event has gone from being something REALLY special that almost set the standard for enthusaist events to something that is almost just an afterthought. Well, XLR8R was traditionally once again running one train. *sigh* At least it wasn't as bad as last year, the wait right when we got there was only about 5 minutes, which was cool, but it flucated between 10 and 20 minutes after that. Not a bad wait, but when you've only got two hours and you're waiting 20 minutes per ride when there is a perfectly good 2nd train sitting on the transfer track, it's just a little bit disappointing. So after that we made the rounds....one ride on Boomerang, Monty, Timberline Twister, Jaguar, Supreme Scream....now what? We went back to XLR8R towards the end of ERT and got our 2nd ride in. It was now just 10:00 and some of the people we were with needed to get their Silver Bullet credit, so we wandered over to SB to find them still cycling empty trains and a line that filled 30-40 minutes of the queue area and was coming out of the front. Screw that! Same thing over at Ghostrider! If there is one thing Knott's doesn't do well is handle large crowds. And it was clear that today would NOT be a 'light' day, so we went into emergency mode "Quick! This place is screwed! We need to get to a good park! Any suggestions????" Since some of the guys hadn't gotten their Mummy credit, we were off to Universal! We had a REALLY good time there! Yeah, it was PACKED, but this is a park that knows how to deal with crowds and push people through the rides. We did the single rider line for Mummy, which everyone thought was 'fun', but nothing amazing; Jurassic Park, which is still my favorite ride there; Backdraft "Hi, I'm Ron Howard"; We got really bored on the tram tour, but at least the War of the Worlds stuff was worth it; and then Josh just HAD to ride Back to the Future...we nearly killed him for making us do that. We all walked through the Van Helsing or the "insert the Stephen Sommers movie here" maze. All I can say is that if this maze is any kind of idea of what Halloween Horror Nights was like at USH, I can understand why people don't believe us that HHN in Orlando is so good! It was the perfect way to kill 5 hours before having to head back down to Knott's. We made it back down to Knott's around 5ish and the line for Silver Bullet was much shorter so we took our ride. Again, it's a fun ride, nothing at all "WOW" about it, and it certainly makes you appreciate the more forceful B&M's like Batman, Dragons, Nemesis, etc. After Silver Bullet it was time for the meet over at McDonalds. We wandered over and spent the next 2 1/2 hours there chatting with tons of people and just having a good time catching up with friends. For us, this is what the event is all about. We didn't stay for night ERT partly because we really had no desire and partly because Elissa was coming down with some death flu. We took our "token ride" on Bullet and we'd just been on Ghostrider the week before, so we had our fill of Knott's. This morning was the Rideworld event at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Elissa stayed home with her death flu, so I was on my own. Now, I'll be the first to admit that SFMM isn't the best run park in the world either, but they ARE improving...a LOT! We've now been to the park 3 weeks in a row, and have seen examples of improvements that we haven't seen in the past 3 years, but I'll get to that later. As for the event, Goliath, Riddler's, and X were running...all with two trains, and all with crews that seemed to be energetic and hustling to get people on and off the rides. This made it so that the stations were empty and you could ride as much as you could handle! We ended up getting like 8 rides on Goliath, 3 on Riddler's, 1 on X. And we could have done a lot more had we wanted to, but it was nice to take it at a slower pace. Around 9:30 we noticed the park was testing a TON of coasters. Batman, Superman, Viper, Revolution, etc were all going. Then heading up the lift hill on Goliath around 9:57 we noticed that people were on Superman! Had the park opened the gates early...AGAIN??!? As we pulled into the brake run we noticed the public had started coming in. ERT was over, and we had gotten more than our fill of rides in. Josh needed his Batman credit so we headed over there, running two trains, with no wait. Next up was Scream since Carlos needed that credit. Same thing two trains, no wait. Next up was Colossus.....ugh...running one train..WHY?!?! Doesn't this ride have like 10 trains?!? It was only a one-train wait, so that wasn't too bad, but by the time we got off the ride, the station was full. Yes, that was dissapointing, and unacceptable, but it's good to see the park improving in other areas. I'm hoping that under new management, maybe we'll be able to say the same thing about Knott's with future visits! If SFMM can do, so can Knott's! We went up the hill for Superman, but the line there was already 30 minutes, so we decided to head out, go to lunch and say goodbye to everyone until next year. Like I said, overall it was a really fun weekend. It was good to see everyone again, good to get a couple rides on XLR8R, good to have Universal as a great fall-back option to Knott's, and good to see SFMM is getting their act back together. Anyway, until next Solace.... ---thanks for reading! --Robb

^ They are talking about Hope's Epcot video which can be found here: http://www.themeparkreview.com/contest2004.htm Personally, I don't find it offensive at all. It's just some teenage kids at a park having fun. They are a LOT worse things I have seen people do at parks than play in the water and screw around. And while some of their antics in the video aren't things *I* would personally do at a park, there isn't anything there that would make me disqualify a video over. --Robb

Ahh! Much better! Not quite as disturbing! --Robb

I have to be honest, Zane's avatar kind of creeps me out. What does everyone else think? --Robb

We already have a movies thread. Please copy and paste your posts into this thread: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=247 --Robb

Did you hear about the new Helen Keller Doll? You wind her up and she bumps into the furniture!

OK, I'm going to put an end to all this RIGHT NOW. If I hear of ANYONE sending abusive PMs to other members on this board you will be BANNED! No questions. This is NOT about arguing, it's about having fun. If you want to argue with people, do it via private email, NOT on my boards! --Robb "Thread closed" Alvey

Once a DVD goes out, it usually only takes about a week to get to an international location. I'm a little backed up with orders right now, but I should be caught up this week. As far as the Epcot video, yeah...that one wasn't filmed by us, and while there were some things in there that I personally wouldn't do at a park, overall the video segment WAS very funny, and very energetic, which is something we looked for in our contest entries. --Robb

I need to make sure RatTums cam is on more often. I haven't had it on as much lately because we've been busier with stuff. I'll try to get the webcam back up this weekend! --Robb

^ We will most likely come out with a new DVD towards the end of the year, or early 2006, but nothing in the next couple of months. --Robb