robbalvey

This is absoultely NOT TRUE at all. It is only true if you are not a smart theme park patron and you follow the sheep into every single long line without thinking or being strategic on how to maximize your FP+ options combined with the best times to get into a stand by line. I cannot tell you how many times I've stood in the Flight of Passage standby line and it only took me 25 minutes to get on the ride because I was smart about when I chose to get in that line. I can also tell you that I've been on attraction like Frozen, Toy Story Mania, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, etc, in the MIDDLE OF THE DAY without a Fast Pass and only waited 20-40 minutes because you figure out when are peak periods for rides and not peak periods. Also doing some smart second guessing as to when people are and are not booking Fast Passes comes into play as well. It annoys me when people claim that you "HAVE to get a FastPass or you're not getting on the bigger rides" because that's completely false. I would hope that the people posting to these forums would know better.

And I, on the other hand, have not had a visit to Disneyland in the past few years WITHOUT having a meal at Naples! In fact, on my last visit we went TWICE!

Thanks to John "Coasterlvr" for filming the "Google Assistant" dark ride for us at CES 2019! It's impressive that this is a temporary dark ride showing off the Google Assistant features. I'm getting some serious Epcot vibes from this....

We have heard the rumors too. Not seen anything official from the park. Please do not link to any "rumor sites" or threads until something is officially announced. Thank you.

Having some fun on Griffon....

There was never anything remotely risky about Pacific Park. That was place always "played it safe" as it's basically a small Morgan coaster with an assortment of off-the-shelf Zamperla-like kiddie rides. The park could practically run itself as far as the attractions go and the safety of those rides. City Museum is a totally different type of animal. We always said that City Museum only existed because corporate America and lawyers hadn't discovered it yet... ...and now they have.

Why is it that none of this surprises me in the least...

Do we really need two separate Elitch Gardens threads going on or would anyone be offended if I merged this one into the other one?

I mean, is really a loss? REALLY? .

Now it's Elissa's turn! Elissa speaks very honestly about what goes on behind the scenes at TPR on the Big Fat Panda Show! CLICK: Skip to 3:34 for her interview!

Enjoy some Mamba POV....

Yeah, I gotta be honest. I'm sort of at the point where if everyone wants to rank everything to the nth degree, that's not the TPR Coaster Poll and I'd rather just not do it at all. So it either needs to be something that both the casual fan and die hard fan can both relate to, or we just table this idea, and let everyone vote in the golden tickets or USA Today polls. I personally think we are already WAY WAAAAY better than that. Why do we need to stress over SLC's and Boomerangs by adding multiple options that a handful of people are going to care about? That just seems really silly to me.

Giving people more choices doesn't make the poll less confusing or daunting. It does the opposite.

And as someone who has ridden maybe 2,000 coasters in the world (I say maybe because I stopped counting and I don't even know) and have probably ridden an SLC with Kumbak trains, I would also have to look it up because I couldn't even tell you which ones had them and which ones didn't because I simply do not give-a-shit.

This is even more confusing. Seriously is "SLCs with the KumbaK restraints" versus "SLCs with the old restraints" really going to upset the outcome of the poll that much? Like if one gets ranked at #286 versus #312 is anyone really going to care? I want this poll to appeal to the masses, not JUST the "out of state roller coaster weirdos." (bonus points if you know where that reference is from.) And the reason why I want it to appeal to the masses is this: We've seen loads of polls out there for the "masses" where they group "top ten" roller coasters and everyone goes WTF? Including, but not limited to, the Golden Tickets. IMO, the Mitch Hawker poll was the absolute BEST example of a coaster poll out there were it put people's ACTUAL EXPERIENCES against each other, not just a popularity contest where "the park with the best social media team who can get the most votes, wins!" The trouble with the Hawker poll is how complex it was and it took HOURS sometimes for people to fill out a ballot. What I want with the TPR Coaster Poll is a poll that can appeal to the "casual theme park fan" without being too daunting to use and without being a "popularity content." Yes, the die-hard roller coaster people are going to want to rank every single coaster, every single type of coaster, every single seat on a coaster, but quite frankly, that's not what the type of community TPR is, sorry. We have, at least for the past few years, been stressing that people focus on the "fun" of theme parks and roller coasters and worry less about counting credits and ranking them to the nth degree. But people still ask me everywhere "what is your top ten", "What is your favorite coaster," etc. So I feel it is important to be able to produce a list of the best in the world, and of course, the worst in the world. Do I think that list needs to include "Boomerangs with Vekoma trains" against "Boomerangs with Arrow trains?" Absoultely NOT! In fact, if it was purely up to me, I'd remove Boomerangs entirely! But like I said, I want this poll to be a good mix of what appeals to the masses and what appeals to the die hard enthusiasts. I'd love nothing more than THOUSANDS of people to contribute ballots to the poll this year. And just being completely honest, we aren't going to get there if we have stuff like "SLCs with the KumbaK restraints" on the ballot. Just my two cents....

They both will launch in 2020 and they both seem to be the exact same ride based on the renderings.... So I'm not really sure which one will be "first" nor do I think it even matters.

Yes. Very much so.

But you have plenty of time to go visit theme parks and ride water rides in a tuxedo, right? (Which people saw because of TPR... you're welcome.) Yes, most of the theme park community "hates us." Uh-huh. Yeah... so is that why we got over10 million views on our YouTube videos last month? 1.6 million engagements on our Facebook & Twitter posts last month? And 21,000 new followers on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter last month? During the "off-season" slower period for our socials no less. We got all that engagement on social media because "most of the theme park community hates us", right? You know who hates us? I'll tell you who... A small minority of people whom we've been rude to on purpose on our forums or social media in response to the stupid crap **they posted** and couldn't take personal responsibility for their own dumb comments. THAT is who hates us. And you know what? They can go ahead and hate us. You know why? Because we DON'T CARE and we are better off without people like that making our social media channels and online forums DUMBER for other people to read. tl;dr - I won't be taking your advice, thanks. ps. I also like how I wasn't the first or only one to call you out your post, but you chose to single me out in your response. Yeah, that's fair, right? Please. Hate on me more. Let me show you how much I care...

Dear Santa Claus - The one and only thing I ask for Christmas is for PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT TO STOP POSTING HERE!!!!! Do you think you can get that fine Christmas present for me? Damn, you're MEAN Santa!!! And what is interesting about all those examples is that this coaster will sit FARTHER AWAY from and be even more protected from the water than any of those, and all of those coasters seem to operate... JUST FINE. Honestly, I just want people to stop making stupid, ignorant posts. Is that really too much to ask? Yes, I know it is... People are going to just keep getting dumber...

It’s not a credit. But I also don’t care!

Crowds shouldn't be too terrible. The closer you get to July the more busy the parks get. Expect "light to moderate crowds" depending on the days of the week you are there.

I'm not sure how much it would skew things, but for example, expanding more from what I wrote above, what I'll do is the following.... Figure out what my top 50 is.... then my bottom ten. and let's say, just for the sake of argument, I have 400 coaters left over. I basically assign them to the following numbers: 1-50 - The best coasters I've ever been on!!! 100 - I like that coaster! 200 - I didn't hate it, but I don't need to ride it again. 300 - I don't need to ride it again. 400 - I did not like that coaster! 401 - 410 - The worst coasters I've ever been on! It's just an easy way for me to rank things. And by putting all those middle coasters in "buckets" it does help the overall poll.

Yeah, I think with everything that has gone on lately, a bit of privacy is probably the best. Like AJ said, people can post their top coaster rankings if they want to.

I don't know about anyone else, but I basically rank my top 50, my bottom 10, and everything in the middle gets lumped together into categories that could be distilled down to: "Good" "Whatever" "Meh" Because I sort of just feel that I would never need to know or care about what my number one hundred and fifty second coaster ranking is.