robbalvey

Umm isn't the point of a vertical drop to have zero gravity, aka no force? Ain't like they pull a ton of Gs at the bottom either Are you kidding? Have you been on SheiKra? You get some very good airtime down the drop, especially in the back, and then you feel some very good forces when you pull out at the bottom into the first inversion. EDIT: Apparently SheiKra pulls 4 Gs at the bottom of the first drop.

I think the problem most people have with Gatekeeper isn't the first drop or even up until the first keyhole, it's just that once it goes over the entrance to the park, the ride might as well be over. I can't think of many more coasters that have such a decent beginning into one of the most boring and useless 2nd halves of a layout ever. And the first drop is very good. I'm not sure I would call it "super intense" but it is very good.

^ Yes, we had the JR Rail Pass. We had several base camps because we covered a lot of the country: Tokyo, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Tokyo Disney.

Exactly. Again, I'm not the biggest B&M fan out there, most people know this, mainly because I haven't been impressed with a lot of their rides lately, but I'm happy to see another Dive Machine be built. It has potential.

My thoughts are this - assuming this is all real... Every B&M Dive Machine I've been on, sans maybe the original Oblivion & G5 has been by far a better experience than every Wing Rider I've been on, and probably *most* of the other B&M hypers, Inverts (other than maybe Banshee), or Floorless coasters I've ridden from them since about 2004. So that being said, even if this is the worst of the Dive Machines, which I don't think it would be based on that that layout, I certainly see this ride being much better than Gatekeeper, X-Flight, Leviathan, OzIris, Silver Bullet, Wild Eagle, Intimidator, Led Zeppelin, Phaethon, Hollywood Dream, Patriot, Hydra... just to name a few. Sure, it might not be the be-all end of coasters even at Cedar Point, but I think it has a shot at being one of the better B&Ms to come along in the last ten years.

So are these real or is this something someone made? What do we think?

Closing in on 600 tickets sold for West Coast Bash weekend! They will sell out soon! Buy them NOW! http://www.themeparkreview.com/store/index.php?categoryID=22

Please note - it is not necessary to send us email after email after email after email asking if we got the payment for your tickets. If we didn't get your payment, trust me, YOU WILL FIND OUT! Getting all these emails is just wasting our time and that is time spent we could be using to make the event better. Thank you for your understanding.

I think the poll is pretty much dead, at least for this year. I kind of said it earlier, if we have any tech savvy people on this forum that want to try to re-create the poll and put something together, I'd be willing to host it. But it would need to be more like Mitch's poll where it compares people's ACTUAL experience against each other, not just a popularity contest. I'm not interested in polls like that.

I think the best way to answer the original question... "Everything is cyclical..."

^ But that's not what you said. Again, you're just twisting words around to make it sound like whatever someone else is saying is less correct than what you're saying. Seriously, you need to stop this or you won't be welcome on these forums anymore.

It's not that much different, to be honest. The trains feel a bit more open, yes, but other than that, it rides pretty much the same as it did before.

About 3 or 4 years ago.

I would avoid Metro West and the area around Millennia. Dr. Philips, Williamsburg, Windermere, and the areas around those are pretty nice.

^ How do you not know what Xcelerator is?

Next Stop! Nagashima Spaland! I will warn you that there are a lot of roller coaster and ride pics in this update because Nagashima is one of those parks that likes us a lot and allows us to film everything, so we filmed a LOT of stuff! Overall, I really like this park a lot. Many people consider it the "Cedar Point of Japan" and a few years ago that might have been more true than it is today, but the similarities are still there. The park is kind of out on the water, if you look at the line-up of coasters & rides from both parks, you can draw more than a few coincidental similarities, etc. It also has to do with the fact that the park has a lot of coasters. Twelve at the moment, which is quite a few for a Japanese park! Compared to the other big "coaster park" in Japan, Fuji-Q, Nagashima wins when it comes to quality of staff, efficiency, etc. It's a coin toss for me as far as rides go. But between the two, I far prefer Nagashima. Anyway, on to some photos and I'll add more videos into this report as we get them posted on YouTube! We are all ready for the big bad roller coaster park! There were taxis here to meet us! Well, there was at least one.... But we made it! Hooray! And what better way to start our day at a Japanese theme park but on a German made shuttle loop? The people in the train are happy... And the ride goes and does stuff. It was good. Next up, we rode some woodie flavored roller coaster. It tasted like wood. Everyone in the train the licked the track gave it a thumbs up. Some people made silly faces. And giants rode together. Because they are cute. Yes, there are lots of pictures of people sitting in the station. Why? I'm not sure. Why did you click to read this report? Why are there bees in the sky? This next coaster is still the longest in the world, and it's tall, but it's not the tallest anymore. These guys licked the track. It's tall and stuff. More pictures of people sitting in the train pretending to have a good time even though sitting in the train in the station is actually quite boring. This part of the ride is not boring. These two dudes have had a nice bromance together. They share beer and ear wax. Bumps of fun on Steel Dragon 2000. None of these people would survive being attacked by a bear. There is some airtime on Steel Dragon. The track is like 8 thousand million feet long. Oh, we rode this too. It's cool because the tracks are in the middle and stuff. A very small kid rode this and liked it apparently. It does this a lot and we like this. More sitting people. Hello sitting people. How are you sitting people? Track and stuff. Bumpy bumps in the bumpy rode. The ride is called "Bobkart" but it doesn't belong to a guy named "bob." No one here in the station is named Bob. This is a ride and it was called "Cork Screw" we know this because that's what the sign said. The roller coaster did loopy things. The ride goes straight down. KERCHUNK! "See, we are real men because we have a beer." "I don't know what this is, but it has a smiley face on it!" It was kind of were seeing a Manta clone sitting at Nagashima Spaland. No orcas or baboons were injured in the making of this Manta clone. Here is a picture of it. This was not taking at SeaWorld and then put an Acrobat logo over it. This haunted house had Jesus' head fly across the room. It seriously did. There's a video of it on our Facebook page. They had tons of tables with grills that you could char meat on. Or humans. Or meat. This is a very big Ferris Wheel. This is Jack. Jack no like the Ferris Wheel. Jack died on the Ferris Wheel. Poor Jack. From the Ferris Wheel you can see the Space Shuttle! Is that a real Space Shuttle? I think it is a real space shuttle because it says the words "Space Shuttle" and why would you call something a Space Shuttle if it wasn't a Space Shuttle? From the Ferris Wheel you can get a view of Cedar Point. Rides and things. Stuff. More stuffs. Manta that's not Manta. Big white mess of wood. There is a train down there somewhere. The water park is massive. Bouncy Bouncy Bouncy. This pirate ship is giant. Like REALLY REALLY giant. They also had a swingy thingy. Yay! Looping ride through the trees! Hello Japanese people riding German things. Dan got wet and melted. Nobody noticed. This ride is at Legoland but it also here at the same time. Weird, huh? Yay! They had a sign for my 50th Anniversary for when it will be my 50th Anniversary in the future! How nice of them! I don't know what this shirt means, but it makes me nervous. They had lots of roller coasters and rides that you could eat. This is a puzzle, but you could probably still eat it if you wanted it to. You could eat this. And you could eat this. You could eat all of these things. More stuff to eat. They still had funny shirts. Not as funny as before, but still funny. After the park we stumbled across some truly screwed up Japanese thing. Not one of those "fake, touristy" Japanese screwed up things like Robot Restaurant that is designed to make American tourists go "wow, isn't Japan weird? Look at these pictures on my Facebook page!", but this was legit. It was sort sort of haunted themed "jail restaurant" and it was very screwed up. You entered the place and sat in the demon chair. A doll appeared and was creepy for no reason. Then there was a skull. None of this made any sense. But it looked cool. A police lady came out and arrested me. She asked me "What bad thing did you do?" I said "RAAAAPE!!!!" And she took me away! We were led into the cell block in which there was a "lockdown" currently in progress. Police people were walking around shouting. Electric guy came out screaming. Right in front of me electric guy was tazed and shot to death. I think he did bad stuff worse than RAAAAAPE! This was our cell, number 59, I was hoping for 69, but this was ok, too. We are now locked up. This is the menu full of weird shit. Thankfully some of it was in English, but not all of it. We decided that we needed to try everything because we were in jail. Lots more weird stuff. And more... We need stuff like this in America. I ate the devil's brain and it was good. People sitting in their cells. We are all in jail for RAAAAPE!!!! We had a bizarre mixture of drinks. And food that looked like human hands. We were given lots of things to add to our drinks to make us feel funny. Derek ate an eyeball. John just had beer. What the hell John, we are in some freaked out weird ass place and you have a beer. Ok, fine at least it looks like pee. I have no idea what any of this is. We can only read the titles! Oh, it's french fries served in a death bag. The girls liked me because I was funny looking. Derek decided we should all get the pills. We had one pill each. We had no idea what was in them, they didn't tell us, and it made a burning feeling going down. I think this is exactly what leads to RAAAPE!!!! There was a skull in here. We did not have sex with it. Derek had a very large beer that was made to look like a very large pee glass. We think this might have actually been a lot of pee. John had a little bit of pee. But it's frothy. Just like mine! Har har, John! You think you drank beer pee? You did not! You drank Robb pee! Hahahahahahahahaha!!!! And then weirder stuff happened. The inmates escaped and there was another lock down! They attacked us! They tried to break into our cell! Some of them made it in, but they just wanted pills and beer. They were all creepy faced. It was all really screwed up and we couldn't understand what was going on...but it didn't matter! This dude just came in and hung out with us. And then a giant panda showed up!!! WTF IS GOING ON?!?!?!? IS THIS BECAUSE OF THE PILLS!?!?! This guy was holding up a severed hand of someone he just killed. I don't even know what to make of this, but it was all really messed up. Scary guy climbing into our cell. The police shot and killed everyone and the prison was calm again. We said goodbye to our prison guards. Dan wanted to have hot sex with them, but they politely said "no thank you, Dan." The Lockup was really screwed up! There are many of these in Japan. Try it. It's really bizarre but awesome!

I'm happy to announce that along with four hours of ERT on Twisted Colossus, we also have... FOUR HOURS OF ERT ON XCELRATOR! Does this mean we have eight hours of ERT on the best steel coasters in Southern California??? Get your tickets NOW! They won't be around much longer! http://www.themeparkreview.com/store/index.php?categoryID=22

^ I just added a higher res version.

Here's a shot from the GoPro of Intimidator 305 from Volcano. Thought this looked pretty awesome! EDIT - I just attached a higher res version for download if you want it. i305_from_volcano_.jpg.zip Higher res version

Great! Had the surgery on it. Went smoothly, no issues. Just recovering now. Thanks for asking!

It depends on your basis of comparison. If you are comparing Busch Gardens Williamsburg to much larger tourist destinations like Orlando, Las Vegas, or New York City, then Busch Gardens is more of a regional park. Chuck can probably answer this better, but I'm sure the Williamsburg area falls somewhere in between. I'm guessing that the majority of tourists to the Williamsburg area are ones that are driving in from a state or few away, and less people that are flying in across the country or the world as a "destination" like the would be the markets I mentioned above. But I could be wrong. I don't know the tourism demographic in the area that well. EDIT: And I see that he already got to the answer!

I've often gone to Lagoon with an odd number of people and we've had empty seats on Wicked, even with people in the single rider queue. I think it happens more times than you imagine it does. Again, another person with a different story from what he claims. Interesting...

^ I really find it interesting how all these other people all have very different stories visiting the park from what you have working there and instead of listening to any of them, you immediately jump down their throats siting "SOPs" claiming that they are wrong. Elissa said it best a few pages back "sometimes visiting the park as a guest is very different from visiting the park as an employee." I see this happen a lot with employees that "think they know more than they do" when really I think you need to start listening to people who are visiting the park more than telling people that what they are seeing isn't happening. The way you corrected Elissa, when I know damn well she was reporting exactly what she saw that day, and now you're correcting this person, too, sorry, not only are you being rude, but I don't believe anything you say. Sounds to me like you're just trying to be a shill for the park and try to make it as though none of these things people are reporting are happening. I don't buy it for second. And it's not like people are saying they are having a bad time, just reporting on operational things. You might work there in operations, but I guarantee you don't know everything, and it makes you look REALLY bad to go around correcting someone and telling them what they saw didn't happen.

A park where it pulls most of it's demographic from an immediate area surrounding the park.

Here's some new footage of Phoenix at Knoebel's shot at 60FPS! Enjoy!