robbalvey

^ Oh, that would GREAT if you could find out for us! We would be going on Friday, June 24th. I have a feeling though that this park won't be possible for us because unless they are open until 10pm, it would mean having to cut our day at Heide very short, and that's one of the parks we'd like to spend at LEAST 6 hours at. --Robb

We finally installed RCT3 and I downloaded the park tonight! --Robb

I just have to know...did you include "Water Monkey Adventure" in your park??? --Robb "To quote Elissa - What's a 'Water Monkey?!?!'" Alvey

^ Most of my logic is like that.

Our current plans call for us to return to the UK in 2006. Hopefully that will end up happening. As for what we use to edit our videos - Adobe Premiere 6.5 --Robb

YES!!! Look for details very soon! --Robb

^ Silver Bullet is a LOT like Medusa at SFMW. Same kind of ride. Really big, huge layout, and the ride just feels 'floaty' for lack of a better term. There isn't anything really 'bad' about it, just nothing amazing that makes you want to IMMEDIATLY run around and ride again! You know what Silver Bullet is? It's like the pefect "rental" using movies as an analogy...it's not a movie you want to buy and have in your DVD collection, but you don't mind renting it every once in a while. --Robb

^ Hey at least they are ripping up the parking lot. Unlike poor Scream and Medusa:

Ok, Europe people! Since you've had the chance to ask us questions, now it's our turn! We're in the final planning stages for our Europe trip this summer and we need some advice! The following is our day to day itinerary and below are a few questions. Keep in mind while reading this that we are driving a mini-van during the entire trip, we are doing most of our driving at night after visiting a park, so that we can be at the next day's park for opening. We will usually be done with most parks by 5 or 6pm, so that should give us plenty of driving time at night. Ok, here's our current plan. Day 1: Leave LAX 6pm Day 2: Arrive CDG 2pm, then drive 3 hours, stay at hotel near Brussles Day 3: Walibi Wavre (Six Flags Belgium), stay at hotel near Brussles Day 4: Bobejaaland, then drive 4 hours to hotel near Walibi World Day 5: Walibi World (Six Flags Holland), then drive 4 hours - stay at hotel somewhere near Germany/Denmark border. Day 6: Drive 4 Hours, Farup Sommerland, take overnight ferry from Fredericshavn to Oslo Day 7: Tusenfryd, then drive 6 hours to hotel near Liseberg Day 8: Liseberg, then drive 4 hours to hotel near Tivoli Day 9: Tivoli & Bakken, stay at Tivoli hotel Day 10: Bon Bon Land, then take ferry to Puttgarden. Try to visit Hansa Park, then drive 4 hours to hotel near Heide. Day 11: Heide Park, then drive 4 hours to hotel near WBMW Day 12: Movie Park Germany (WBMW) then drive 1 Hour to Toverland, then drive 3 hours to hotel near Phantasialand Day 13: Phantasialand, then drive 1 hour to Klotten Park, then drive 3 hours to hotel near Holiday Park Day 14: Holiday Park then drive 2 Hours to hotel near Europa Day 15: Europa Park, then drive 6 Hours to hotel in Verona Day 16: Drive 3 hours to Mirabilandia, then drive 3 hours to hotel near Gardaland Day 17: Gardaland, Movie Park/Aqualand then drive 6 hours to hotel near Walibi Rhone-Alps Day 18: Walibi Rhone-Alps, then drive 4 Hours to Nigloland, then drive 3 Hours to hotel near Walibi Lorraine Day 19: Walibi Lorraine , then drive 3 Hours to Disneyland Paris, stay at Disneyland Paris Day 20: Disneyland Paris/Disney Studios Paris, stay at Disneyland Paris Day 21: Parc Asterix, then Disneyland Paris, stay at Disneyland Paris Day 22: Leave CDG Now on to the questions. Question #1 - Since we are traveling during the last three weeks of June, we are assuming that parks shouldn't be that crowded. Is this a correct assumption? When we did our Europe trip in 2002, we were there during the last 2 weeks of July and the parks were *PACKED*. We're hoping by going a bit earlier, we won't see as many crowds. When do schools officially get out for the summer? Question #2 - Are the drive times that we have posted accurate? We're going by our maps and mapquest and trying to be a little conservative. But do they look correct or are there drives that we should plan shorter or longer, for example, these in particular: Question #3 - How long realistically will it take to get from Walibi World to Farup? The maps we have say it should take about 8 hours. Is this realistic? Should we budget less time, more time, or is this about right? Question #4 - On the drive from Liseberg to Tivoli, we know we have to go over a really big bridge. Any idea of common backups or tolls over that bridge? Question #5 - On Day 10, when we take the ferry, does anyone think we need to make reservations for this one? It goes about every 30 minutes, and it seems like we should be ok without them, we just want to make sure. Question #6 - Also on Day 10, is it realistic to be able to hit Hansa park? How much time should we budget for Bon Bon Land? Is it a park we can see in 3 hours or less? And how long would we need at Hansa Park? Question #7 - On Day 11, would it be possible to hit Fort Fun after Heide Park? Does anyone know what time Fort Fun would close on a Friday night in late June? More specifically, we're actually not concerned about the coasters at Fort Fun, we just want to ride the Alpine Coaster! But we also don't want to sacrifice too much time at Heide. Any idea of how long it would take to drive from Heide to Fort Fun? Question #8 - On Day 12, we plan on hitting WBMW then Toverland. Is this realistic? We're planning on leaving WBMW by 3pm to get to Toverland by 4pm, which should give us 2 hours at that park. Question #9 - On Day 13, we are planning on leaving Phantasialand at 2:30pm in order to get to Klotten park. Is one hour drive from Phantasialand to Klotten correct? And is 5 hours at Phantasialand enough? Question #10 - On Day 14 when we are at Holiday, we are considering trying to also hit Tripsdrill, but we're not sure if that's realistic. How long does the drive take between Tripsdrill and Holiday Park? Question #11 - We have a LOOOONG drive between Europa and Mirabilandia. We've estimated 8 hours, and we're going to split it up because we want a full day at Europa. Is 8 hours accurate? Do the tunnels get congested, are the roads through Switzerland difficult to drive? How busy do you think Mirabilandia will be on a weekday at the end of June? Question #12 - Same question as #11, but between Gardaland and Walibi Rhone-Alps? Is 6 hours about right? Question #13 - We will be at Asterix on the first Monday of July. I have been to this park about 10 times now and it's ALWAYS packed!!! Any idea if we can expect yet another crowded day on a Monday in early July? Question #14 - We are in the process of booking hotels. We are going to stay at the Liseberg hotel, Phantasialand hotel, Europa Park hotel, and on property at Disneyland Paris. All other nights we are looking for 'motels' that are right off the motorway and easy to get to. Any suggestions? Question #15 - What can we expect on the overnight ferry we are taking? It is pretty straightforward? Is it "nice?" Are we actually going to get any sleep? Question #16 - Bonus parks! Can you think of any other 'small' parks that we should consider hitting, even if it's just for a 'credit run' that are "on the way" of our current route. We don't want to go out of our way, since as you can see our schedule is already insane! Question #17 - Any traveling fairs that you know of that are going on near the parks we are planning to hit? Like I said we'll be in Europe the last 3 weeks of June through July 5th. So if there is a German fair going on the last week of June near a park we're visiting, we might be able to hit that! I think that's it! (Isn't that enough questions?) Any other words of wisdom you can give us would be helpful. Remember that Elissa and I have both been to Europe several times before so we kind of 'know the ropes' we're just confirming what we already have planned out. And THANK YOU to anyone who can help. We'll be posting the dates closer to the time of our trip so we can meet up with as many people as possible. --Robb "THANKS!" Alvey

Hey kenshinmac, How is Water World? We're considering doing a Denver trip this year and that's one of the places we want to hit. Is it pretty cool? The 'dark ride' tube slides look really cool! Also, I noticed that one section has all the slides named after the coasters in the "Vacation" movie - "Screeming Meemie", etc. --Robb "Hoping to get to Lakeside, Elitch's, Waterworld, and Lagoon at some point this year!" Alvey

Did anyone hit parks over this holiday weekend? I was hoping to have some trip reports from the So Cal parks, but it pretty much rained all weekend. =( Oh, well...Next weekend we're doing Knott's and SFMM so we'll have some TR's and photos! --Robb "I hope it doesn't rain for Dave's visit!" Alvey

That's a hard one. I'd have to say it's a toss up between Dragons, Kumba, Nemesis, Knight Flight, and probably the original Batman. --Robb

I decided I'd make an HTML page out of my excel spreadsheet so you guys can see what I count: http://www.themeparkreview.com/robbcoaster.htm At one point I used to count relocated coasters at a time where there were only a handfull of them on my list, but then I stopped when I actually started following several coasters around! I think I stopped when SFKK's Vampire became SFNE's Flashback. That was the last one, after that I stopped counting re-located coasters. --Robb

So here's a question for you all...do you guys like waterparks, and if so, which ones? It always seems as though many coaster enthusaists aren't really into waterparks. Elissa and I *LOVE* them. In fact, every year we try to have a meet up at Hurricane Harbor. While that's not the best water park in the world, we always manage to have fun there. I'd say my favorite water parks are Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Lagoon, Dorney's Waterpark, Schlitterbahn. --Robb

^ Yeah, I kind of wonder what happened to Nemesis Inferno. I keep hearing mixed reviews about it, but a lot of the 'glowing' reviews are from people that live near it. Kind of like the glowing reviews of Silver Bullet I keep hearing. Then again, we had heard nothing but bad things about Batman: Dark Knight at SFNE, and we didn't think that was as bad as people made it out to be. Not the best ride in the world, but far from B&M's worst. --Robb

If you're going mid-week you shouldn't have ANY problem. Make sure you get on Mummy, Dragons, Hulk, MiB, Spiderman, etc. And yeah, eat at Mythos!!!! Make sure you ask them if they can do the "Balsamic Chicken." It rocks! It's not on the menu anymore, but they will still make it! --Robb

^ Oh yeah! I forgot about that! :shock: It's back on now: http://www.robbalvey.com/webcam/rattums.htm --Robb

^ I was joking. --Robb "I do that a lot sometimes!" Alvey

^ If you zip it up you can upload it to the Video Games forum as long as it's under 5mb. --Robb

^ Oh, well you can link to any photo by clicking on the "IMG" button when you post a message. Then you just link to the photo you want to post. For example, if you wanted to post a photo of "Blue Fall" from our Japan update, go to the photo you are interested in posting, right click on it to get the URL of that photo which would be: "http://www.themeparkreview.com/japan2004/sp9.jpg" Click on the IMG button, and you'll get the IMG tag "" and that will post your photo. When it's done it should look like this in your post:

^^ Oh, yeah, we constantly edit the songs. We've gotten better at it so you can't tell as much, but we'll extend a song if we need to. For example, the song we used for Hirikata was only 1:30, but we extended it to 2:00. ^ Gee...it sounds to me like a typical Mac user doing typical PC bashing! Seriously, I don't have a biased between one or the other. I just do more work on PCs. If we had an office full of 200 Macs, I'd be working on Macs. But the fact is we CAN'T buy Mac's that will 1. be as inexpensive as the PC's we buy, or 2. purcahse Mac's that can do what we can do on PCs. Quite simply, if you could develop games on a Mac, more companies would be doing it. But you can't. It's a very specified type of machine that we need, and Apple doesn't make one. No "bashing" at all there, just the honest truth. I mean, I have a G4 sitting in my office so we can test Mac versions of our games, but there isn't any development we can on them, sorry. --Robb

Ahh, the Cinema 180. I remember going in there several times. They used to show videos of roller coasters! It used to sit out in the middle of the lake, kind of....of course now, there is no lake there anymore. =( --Robb

Here is probably our favorite picture of us: --Robb

I use Premiere 6.5 on the PC. I ditched the Mac when PC's starting becoming more and more powerful and Mac's kept becoming more and more expensive. Since I develop games on the PC at work, it didn't make sense for me to have a Mac just for video editing, when I can now do everything I was doing on the Mac on the PC. --Robb "Who was using the Mac in the day when there was no firewire support for the PC!" Alvey

^ I kind of credit it to Ric, but I also credit it to the fact that most raw audio SUCKS!!!! That's the real reason to edit it to music. Unless you have really professional sound equipment, the background noise from amusment parks, is...well, "noise" and most of the time un-equal. Having a balanced music track in the background 'hides' a lot of the inconsistencies in the raw audio, and in instances where you have to turn off background audio, it gives you something to fall back on. There have been a few videos lately that we did without music tracks (Journey, Limo, and Pooh onride video, Manhatten Express, etc) but it's rare. I originally wanted to do the Journey to Atlantis segment without any audio, but the raw soundtrack was just too inconsistent and it sounded terrible! Even the Steeplechase/Wacky Soap Box Racers video I just did sounded bad without background music. There was talking during some of the POVs, the sound was unbalanced, etc so it just made sense to give it an 'ambient' background track. Besides....overall it's kind of fun to make 'music videos.' Anyway, that's my answer! --Robb