robbalvey

And that's the difference between you and I. We'll also go to countries with 3 or 4 nice parks, and a bunch of crap, but we'll skip the crap. But I get it. It's what you find fun and what I find funny! QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! "It's ok not to ride every coaster..."

You don't have to go to Indonesia to have dinner with friends! (or maybe you do?)

Going off what I was saying above, at one point, we were considering a Brazil trip. We looked at all the parks we could possibly hit and this is what we came up with... Other than one or two somewhat interesting parks, it was pretty much all crap. And that doesn't even include about another 20-30 small indoor kiddie coasters at family pizza places that we instantly excluded. That trip would have been anywhere between 35-50 "credits" maybe even more if we opted to do some of those kiddie coasters. This was the point a few years ago in which we said "Why would we go out of our way and spend a lot of money to ride total crap when we could go back to really nice parks and re-ride some of the best coasters in the world?" And that's pretty much what we've done ever since! QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!!!

It's this kind of logic that is just sad. Obviously it's good to try new things here and there, but to turn down such major parks for a smaller park of less consequence is mad! Exactly. We got to the point where we started running out of "new coasters" to ride, and we absolutely could have done some trip to like South America for example where there are a TON of new "credits" for us, but other than a couple of SLC's and a woodie that doesn't get much praise, the majority of that part of the world is a lot of crap. So we choose to go back to places we've been before to ride coasters we like over "mopping up" crappy coaster credits. Even when we went to places like India last year. We went to the parks that interested us the most, skipped a lot of the crappy kiddie coaster parks, and went and did other things instead. There were three or four parks that were between 30-60 minutes of where we were at in Mumbai, all with kiddie coasters or spinning mice, and we skipped them. It just wasn't worth it to us anymore. Who cares if your "coaster count" is 536 versus 541. Nobody. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!!!

Wow man, you really must have hit rock bottom there for a while. It's good you decided to get your act together and quit that stuff (the counting) Ha! That was not me. We never got that pathetic! This is my whole point. I realized that after I got to probably 500, it really didn't even matter. If I told some random person "I've been on 200 roller coasters" they be all "Wow, that's crazy!!!!" Then when you get to 500 or even 1,000 people start to look at you like "Wow, really? You're completely nuts." I stopped counting in 2012 and I was just shy of 1,500. I have no idea what I'm at now, nor do I care. In fact, most of the time when people ask me "what is your count" I tell them "I don't count." The only time I even mention it anymore is when some TV show or news reporter wants some factoid. And to be honest, sometimes I've just say "over 1,000" because I actually think telling them 1,500 makes you look a bit obsessive and weird. Because when you tell someone you've been on 1,500 roller coasters, that means at some point there was a lot of Wacky Worms in your life, and I'm honestly now a bit embarrassed about some of that. That's why I say find a goal that gives you some sort of personal satisfaction, and then stop counting and just have fun! And if you're one of those people who wants to just keep counting, that's fine as well. But just remember there is no "winner" in this race, and I'll be not-so-quietly judging you as well! Here's the kind of person I don't "get" ... We have had people tell us they weren't going to do a tour because "there's not enough new credits for them" and I would be all "but we are going to parks like Europa Park, Phantasialand, Holiday Park, Mirabilandia, Efteling, Parc Asterix, Heide Park...all with amazing and awesome coasters!" and they would say "Yeah, I've been on all those...We're gonna travel to some crappy place and ride kiddie coasters instead to pad our coaster count..." Seriously, if money is not an issue why would someone not want to go back to all those awesome places just because there aren't enough "credits." IMO, that's when you know someone has totally lost focus of the hobby, and that's not what we want to promote anymore. I no longer promote "counting credits" and I now encourage people to just "have fun" at parks. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!!!

And this is exactly why we can't have nice things in the country. I'm sure if I was the park, I'd rather not have to put up with all the whining and complaining. I'm personally already putting up with a lot of stupid crap over the ride being closed during WCB (which is ironic because the #1 question asked during past WCB Q&As is "When are you guys going to do something about Ghostrider?") In Japan, for example, Tokyo Disney closes down each of their rides, sometimes for a month or more, every year to do annual maintenance. No one complains. Why? Because they are smart enough to know that there is more than plenty at the park to enjoy your day, and without proper maintenance, rides will no longer be as good as they were when they opened. And this is exactly why that park is the best in the world, because every single ride, no matter how old, looks and feels as though it just opened yesterday. But people here are either not that smart or just looking for something free. I cannot tell you how many times I've been at Magic Kingdom's guest relations and overheard someone complaining about how their favorite ride was closed, and how they made the trip JUST for that ride, and now they want a refund on all their tickets, meals purchased, etc, for them and their entire family. It happens EVERY SINGLE DAY. Multiple times. Anyone who has worked in guest relations will tell you this is a very common complaint. 'Merica!

Simple Google search for "Knott's Marketplace Parking" immediately brought up this: https://www.knotts.com/things-to-do/california-marketplace I know that they got rid of the blanket 3-hour parking for everyone because terrible humanity abused it.

^ Right, except they are clearly talking to people in the know which is clearly more than just "enthusiast speculation"... As horrible as the British press has been about this incident, this article is about the most legit and accurate I've read so far. And let's be honest here, all you need to do is talk to anyone who has any experience with ride manufacturing, ride maintenance, which I have actually done recently regarding this accident, and there are only so many scenarios that are possible, so I don't really think this is totally left-field speculation anymore.

It's not just you. It's the emails, the private messages, and the other posts to this thread. I'm just sick of it. Like I said, we stopped doing public tours because we just got so sick of the complaining and the entitled attitude on the tours. Now we just do trips on our own with a private list of people we personally invite. And that's exactly what we will probably end up doing with these kind of events, too. I want to make something perfectly clear to all of you - We do not make ANY money on these events. ZERO. In fact, this entire event will end up costing us quite a bit out of our own pocket. We don't even get comp tickets to the event for ourselves. The only gain we get out of these events is that we like to put them on and we like to see people have an awesome time and it gives us a fun update to post to the site. We do it because you guys love it. And if that is no longer the case, we'll stop doing these events. Behind the scenes I am working on something West Coast Bash EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And it just sucks to see people complain about stuff that is out of our control as though people somehow in their screwed up brain think that the park is doing this to them on purpose. And you know what's so ironic about this? Every year at the WCB Q&A session, the #1 question that gets asked is "when are you guys going to do something about Ghostrider?" and now they are, and people are bitching about it!!!! FFS, people, stop being so obnoxious!!!! The world does NOT cater to YOUR personal preferences! DEAL WITH IT!!!! Theme parks are meant to be a place to go and have fun. I'm sorry if a ride or two or whatever might be closed on the day you want to go. If that's going to impact your day so much, and I'm being totally serious when I say this... DON'T GO!!! We flew all the way to Dubai once and had Formula Rossa down the entire length of our visit. Yes, it was a bummer, but you know what? We had an AWESOME time. Did we complain? No. We just dealt with it knowing we'd get back and ride it later, and we did. I'm done now. If anyone else feels the need to complain about this, please just don't show up to our event. Thanks for letting me vent.

I'm honestly pretty damn sick of people complaining about Ghostrider being closed. You know, we bust our asses to put on a kick ass event and there is nothing we can do when a ride ends up being closed either for maintenance or for reasons beyond our control. If all you are going to do is bitch and complain about this DO NOT GO TO THE EVENT!!!! We want people at the event that are going to have fun and enjoy themselves not people who are going to moan and complain. I'm being serious. If you're going to be so butt hurt over this that you feel the need to come on the forum and complain DO NOT GO TO THE EVENT!!! WE DO NOT WANT YOU THERE!!!!! And besides, it says right on the event page in bold letters.... EVENT DETAILS AND RIDE AVAILABILITY SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE! Ugh, seriously, go and HAVE FUN people... stop the damn complaining. You are so annoying!!!!!! I'm being serious when I say it's crap like that makes me re-consider whether we continue to do events like this in the past. We have scaled back on events and trips already because of stupid obnoxious people complaining about stuff and we're just damn sick of it. People who complain are ruining the chances of us doing events and trips in the future. Congrats.

Oh, please. I'm pretty sure we all know this is exactly what happened.

I honestly don't care.

Where did you hear that? I've never heard this. And there are plenty of other coaster manufacturers that they could go to even if that was true. I'm sure the real reason why they haven't gotten a new coaster in the last 5 years is that a $25 million dollar investment takes a long time to re-coup and it doesn't appear that the park has been doing badly over these last few seasons with the smaller additions that they have added since. The park actually has a pretty decent line-up of coasters already, and while yes, the majority of "coaster enthusiasts" on this site would like to see them unrealistically add a new coaster every year, but maybe that's not what they need? It's funny how over on the SFMM forum they are dying to get a flat ride, a family ride or something added to the water park because all the park seems to add is coaster after coaster, and here, even though the park has an EXCELLENT collection of rides, we hear people complain that they are putting in rides that help the overall balance of the park.

On another note - I have personally stopped counting coasters entirely. A lot of people ask why, and while at one point I was more obsessive about it, I've come to realize that it simply just doesn't matter. Nobody will get any additional blowjobs for the amount of coasters you've ridden, there is no award to win, no metal to wear, no fruit basket to collect, and other than some sort of bragging rights on the internet or posting a picture of yourself on your Facebook page holding a number sign (that most of your friends are probably laughing at), nobody really cares. I now just go to have fun, ride what I want to ride, and just enjoy myself. I go to parks to ride roller coasters and have fun, not worry about how many coasters I've ridden or how many laps I've taken. I can't even tell you the last time I went out of my way to ride a kiddie coaster on my own. (unless we were doing filming because the world needs HD Wacky Worm footage! lol) My suggestion would be if you really do feel the urge to count is find a milestone that you would be happy reaching, reach that milestone and then stop counting and just go and have FUN riding stuff. Otherwise you'll find yourself running out of "credits" to get and start doing international trips to ride kiddie coasters or Butterfly shuttles. And at that point, IMO, you've completely lost what being a theme park enthusiast is all about, and you're just obsessive to the point of being ridiculous. When you find yourself riding powered coasters in Bahrain, that's when you know you've gone WAAAAAY too far!

While these discussions are a little old, the content pretty much is the same. Read through these and it should answer your question: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35963 http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1365 http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17895 http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44978 http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50515

Except that's not entirely true at all. Yes, they perform a "lot" of maintenance, as shown when their internal team replaces or re-tracks a section of the ride, that part is usually smooth for a limited period of time, but performing "plenty" of maintenance would actually be re-tracking the ride every few years, which is what the ride needs. I might be mistaken, but in the 17 years the ride has been open, has it ever received a complete re-tracking? I don't think so. And we see a lot of other parks actually do this to their wood coasters. So when you have a ride that operates year-round that has been allowed to get as rough as it has to the point where it needs a restoration after less than 20 years, I would argue that they haven't done "PLENTY" of maintenance. If anything, they'd done the required amount to keep the ride running. Case in point: Tonerre De Zeus - Another CCI woodie that's a year older than GhostRider. Last time I was on that coaster a couple of years ago, while it wan't as smooth as opening day, it wasn't anywhere NEAR as rough as GhostRider. That coaster has a similar track length and aggressive layout and also runs 7-car PTC trains. BUT, the park only has a 7-month operating season. I know that every off-season they do a lot of work re-tracking and repairing a good portion of that coaster. Perhaps if you're going to run a wooden roller coaster in an environment where you have a year-round park, you need to dedicate a few months instead of a few weeks to refurbishing that coaster? And maybe not every single year. But you know, I would most certainly sacrifice GhostRider being closed Jan-March to really work on the ride every couple of years than to have it operate in the condition it does now.

The park was not in good shape the first time we visited in 2008, and it was even worse in 2012. Really does sound like it's on it's very last legs. Weird that they were installing a new ride, though...

So I finally got around to watching it. Wow, that entire segment was all our footage! I thought it came out looking great! Was happy with all the edits that they chose and glad they used many of the different angles I gave them. It was also interesting to see the Steel Dragon footage. You could easily tell which rider cam footage was the stuff I gave them and which footage they used from their rider cams of Insane Coaster Wars. One rider cam was very smooth...one not so much! Was nice to see they used a lot of our POVs and off-ride shots from Steel Dragon as well.

They are. You have to be willing to walk pretty far along the ride layout for Phoenix all the way down to almost the turn around to get good first drop or bunny hill pics, and for Twister, you need to go into the campground. They are tough, but there are some decent spots!

I don't get it. I think he's stating that because coaster track has shown up onsite, RCDB is finally acknowledging that Cedar Point is getting a coaster for 2016. Ooooohhhhh! Sorry, I don't consider RCDB's word the "end-all be-all" of roller coaster information.

^ Great report! Hope you guys had a good time at the convention also. We saw many of you guys on I-Drive last week!

So SFDK posted this to their twitter today... But if you zoom in on the crane, look what we see....

I heard the shuttle loop at Shijingshan is also closed now, too?

I don't get it.

Apparently the "expert" in her article is a paid witness-for-hire that knows nothing about the amusement park industry: http://www.jurispro.com/KennethNemire