robbalvey

Here you go!

Refresh my memory, but I can't think of too many accidents at Disney where this is the case. I don't remember any major incidents since 2006 when the last Mission Space and Rockin' Roller Coaster fatalities occured and neither one of them were mistakes of operators or operations. In fact, I think you have to go back to 2004 with the Magic Kingdom parade float incident where anything "operator related" can be found at Walt Disney World. And then it's 2003 with the Big Thunder accident at Disneyland where maintenance was found to be an issue. Before that at Walt Disney World, it was the 2000 Splash Mountain incident where the man got out of the boat and was hit by another one. Not operator error. And then it's the 1999 worker that was killed while doing work on the Skyway. So really, in the past decade I can only see TWO incidents where it looks like there was operator or human error at Walt Disney World. Sorry, Chris, don't mean to be calling you out or anything, just wanted to point that out it may be an unfair statement to make. Unless of course there are other incidents that I'm not aware of or have forgotten about. --Robb "Also, remember that Disney parks are open EVERY DAY versus Six Flags and Cedar Fair parks..." Alvey

Theme Park Review invites you to our first ever Bay Area Bash! Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Friday, August 7th, 2009 Download the flyer for more details! To Register for this event, click here: REGISTER FOR BAY AREA BASH! Bay Area Bash 2009 includes: - Morning backstage tours of SFDK’s animal attractions! Get up close and personal with the park’s wildlife - Night time ERT on Roar, V2, and Tony Hawk! - Group Lunch! - Q&A Session with Six Flags Discovery Kingdom management! - TPR Trivia with prizes! - More TPR Fun to be announced soon! The cost of this event is a flat fee of $35 for everyone! You do not need a season pass to attend. You do not need to buy a separate admission ticket. The $35 event fee includes admission, lunch, backstage tours, ERT, and MORE! You need to be a registered member of Theme Park Review to attend. Your guests, however do not have to be members of the site. If you do not have an account with Theme Park Review, register now...it's *FREE* www.themeparkreview.com/register If your guest is a past member of Theme Park Review that has had their account deactivated or banned, they will not be allowed into the event and your account/membership may also be subject to being deactivated or banned and you may also not be allowed into Bay Area Bash 2009.. This event will go on rain or shine. There will be no refunds in the event of bad weather. Tickets WILL be limited so get yours now before they sell out! See you at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom on Friday, August 7th! --Robb bayareabash_2009_flyer.pdf Bay Area Bash Flyer!

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I can't imagine that the first thought after seeing how devistaing the crash was that someone would go "Hey, let's try to MOVE these trains!" at the risk of creating even more damage or potential injury. We also don't know when the photos or the video was taken. It's possible that the video was taken right after the crash and then the photos could have been taken a couple hours later when they attempted to move the trains after everyone was off. --Robb

Link to video taken just SECONDS after the crash: http://www.clickorlando.com/video/19956043/index.html (Please note - this Click Orlando site is TERRIBLE and you'll have to wait through advertisements, slow buffering, and overall just a poorly developed site to finally watch the video.) The video is kind of chilling though. Imagine if that was a full station filled with guests. It's kind of sad and pathetic though that these guests who did seem like they were "Trying to help" had to be kicked out of the area because they seemed more interested in video taping than the actual well being of another human. It's probably better that way, though. Your average guest isn't going to know how to respond to an incident like this and would probably wind up creating more damage than good. Clear the area and let the professionals handle it. --Robb "Who thinks guests will never be allowed to ride in the front of the monorail ever again..." Alvey

Today marked our return trip to Powerpark! We loved this park last time we visited and now it's even BETTER! If you haven't seen the video we posted from last visit, check it out HERE! Powerpark is really made up of three different sections - the amusement park (Powerland), the race tracks (they have two), and the resort hotel (they have two hotels and a camping village.) The highlight of the amusement park is Thunderbird, a GCI woodie built in 2006, but there is also a ton of other great rides geared for all ages. In fact, I'd say this park has the perfect collection of rides for kids as young as KidTums (2 years old as of this writing) all the way to teens and adults! You'll find lots of little play areas for kids, a shooting dark ride, 4 roller coasters, and tons of flat rides from the tame to extreme! The race track is quite a unique feature as it probably can best be described as a "professional go kart" track. This is NOT the type of karts you see at your typical park. These guys are the REAL DEAL and they have both an indoor track and an outdoor one. (we'll get to the karts later when we do our TPR Grand Prix update!) And then the hotel is just amazing! Great rooms, great restaurant, and perfect for our group! If you can handle the fact that it never gets dark during the summer, this is the perfect place to come camping, ride coasters, drink a lot, hide in the sauna, and cut loose! What can we say? Finland rocks! Why so serious? You'll find out in our "TPR Grand Prix Update" coming soon! Thanks again to Power Park, Vellu, and to everyone for yet another AMAZING visit, and of course to Hanno for the great photos! The next day was the TPR Grand Prix! Oh yeah, did I mention that it's 20 to one in the MORNING and the sun is still going strong? The park owner brought us out to this cabin and sauna in the middle of Finland. It was pretty awesome. Lots of random alchol was consumed. We made it back alive! "Hey Joey & Dave! I finally have my drum set!" SIGNATURE MOVE!!!! The Booster is one my personal favorites... ...but it does this to people! We are not sure what exactly this ride is... C'mon, let the old man poop in peace! I love zombie whores with large cleavage! Oooh! New shooting dark ride credit! Random coaster credits! "Do I look like a carnivorous bee to you, genius?" Did you guys see any sharks or carnivorous bees? Oh yeah, and KidTums even got a credit!!! Since our last visit the park has added lots of rides! There's now a Starflyer, two new kids sections, a new kiddie coaster, lots of stuff! THE SWORD OF POWER! SPEED! POWER!!! GRRRRRR!!!!! YES! 41.83! We are told this is the FASTEST TIME ever on Thunderbird. Tim told us "I have never seen the ride clock under 42 seconds before!" Ok, let's put all the heaviest TPR members we can on the train... How can we break the speed record? "We at TPR are determined to BREAK THE THUNDERBIRD SPEED RECORD!" NERD SHOT II: THE SEQUEL! That's right! Pass the SWORD OF POWER!!! There is only one thing that can add MORE power to this powerfull coaster at Powerland! NERD SHOT!!!! ERT still going strong at close to 9:00pm at night! (And so is the sun!) Yup, that is Mr. Signature Move himself holding down the back part of the train. "This coaster is BIG MIKE APPROVED!" The bunny hops produced some good pops of airtime. Tim the ride op kept telling us the time it took the train to complete the circuit! Each run we kept getting faster and faster! Did we mention how crazy Thunderbird was running? "We love night time ERT in the blazing sun!!!" Thunderbird ran out of control for us tonight! (And yes, our ERT was at 8 o'clock at night, even though you can't tell by these pictures!) You guys ready for some GCI woodie goodness? The real celebrity of the park is still Thunderbird. Yup, they still have the Boomerang. But all the shops and facades behind it are new! What a nice touch! They have really expanded the park quite a bit since our last visit! The rides part of the resort is known as "Powerland"...and that's exactly where we're going! The Land of POWER! Yay! Finally we make it to the Powerpark hotel! Time to check it, drop off our stuff, and go have some FUN! And then this came on the screen....uhhhh...at first you may say "HOW CAN YOU SHOW THIS ON THE BUS...OR ON TPR??!?!" but take a good look at this picture! This is NOTHING DIRTY ABOUT THIS PICTURE AT ALL! Can you see it? Do you know what it is? If you know what this is EMAIL DAN! mrt0ad13@aol.com The drive to Powerpark was a long one (about 5-6 hours) but thankfully we had great stuff like Sifl & Olly to watch! Good morning everyone! How was your overnight cruise? Didn't get much sleep huh? Well, we'll just have to make a suppliment update for that a bit later!

You didn't do anything wrong, but I think you answered your own question - "your first post was WAY more informative than mine!" Usually when "breaking news" is posted (either something like this, or a new ride announcement, etc) we like the first post in the thread to be the most informative it can be. This means as much of a detailed post as possible, links to trusted sources, photos if available, quotes, etc. This usually guarantees the discussion will flourish. If it's just a link with no information "Hey I was picking up my wife and heard this - check it out..." it usually won't generate as much discussion as if it was posted as a real news story. So no you didn't do anything wrong, but just know that if you do post a news story again in the future, this is the way we like to have it done. I hope you understand. --Robb "And this goes for anyone who posts a news story!" Alvey

I finally was able to read this! Great trip report! And this...OMG! LMAO! It's so great when you can later laugh about it, isn't it? --Robb

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I had always thought that the monorails were mostly computer operated and the programming wasn't supposed to allow something like this to happen. Anyone else here who works at the resort know for sure? --Robb EDIT - Nevermind, I see that BeemerBoy already answered this on the last page. Thanks, Scott!

Thanks for posting this, but I'd really suggest you to read this: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51501 While it's awesome that you've posted the TR, we won't ever be able to feature it in our Park Index because the photos are linked from another source. If you would like your trip report to live on in TPR history, please...upload your photos! --Robb

Disney World monorail crash kills driver http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/05/u.s.disney.monorail/index.html Another story: http://www.clickorlando.com/news/19954891/detail.html Link to video taken just SECONDS after the crash: http://www.clickorlando.com/video/19956043/index.html (Please note - this Click Orlando site is TERRIBLE and you'll have to wait through advertisements, slow buffering, and overall just a poorly developed site to finally watch the video.)

Heh...you're right! --Robb

^ Yes they do! --Robb

Link Removed. Try reading our ToS next time:

Three posts ago: Try reading the thread to make sure what you are posting hasn't *JUST* been said on the last page. --Robb

^ Agreed! Please continue to be a good example that "young people can actually post good stuff!" Keep it up! --Robb

Here are my thoughts on the whole "Flash Pass" virtual queue thing in general. Now everyone has completely different takes on this, so please read my thoughts for what they are worth. If you read the trip report above you'll see that while they did get on most rides in a fairly decent amount of time they did wait about 3 hours for three rides (an average of 1 hour each). Now, I'm not sure what the rest of their waits were because it wasn't mentioned, but my overall opinion on waiting in general is this... "Why wait in a line when you don't have to?" It's one thing if you live near the park and you can go back at any time, but if you're coming in from out of town, and are already spending money on the trip, what's another $40ish per person that will allow you to get in MORE rides during your trip. When we did Gold Flash Pass at Great America in 2007 I don't think we waited more than 5 or 10 minutes on our Flash Pass for ANY ride. While it does sound like bigjohnson had a good visit to the park, use his trip report as a gauge for your visit. Would you rather get a Gold Flash Pass and perhaps be able to get some re-rides on Raging Bull or maybe do some flats or do you not mind spending an hour in line for three coasters? It all depends on how much your time is worth. I remember going to Islands of Adventure with a group of people once and we all bough the Express Passes except for one person. This person didn't feel it was worth it because the park wasn't that busy. And while, it wasn't THAT busy, the lines were about 20 - 25 minutes per ride, but our Express Passes got us on each ride IMMEDIATLEY! I think we used our passes for 8 rides which saved us over 2 hours that day. That extra 2 hours allowed us to have a nice sit down meal, we did one or two more rides that we may not have done otherwise, and we took our day at a much more leisurely pace than we would have without them. Remember, that even 20 minutes lines add up! If you can shave 15 minutes off a 20 minute line with a virtual queue device, and you can do that 8 or 10 times during your day, that's a LOT of time you've just saved! But is it worth the money? That's what you need to decide. I personally say "ABSOLUTELY YES!!!" but others may not feel the same way. Hope this gives you some information to think about. --Robb

^ Thanks for letting us know. Also, you should probably take a look at our posting rules. Just so you are aware: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21962 --Robb

They really are not. Especially with the newer Intamin seats where it's more of a "butt rest" and less of a "bicycle seat." It IS fun and enjoyable...just also terrifying! There is something about being 200+ feet in the air, standing, and then dropping at a rapid pace that still scares the crap out of me each time! --Robb

I'd like to see a game that incorporates "Email DAN!!!" somehow! --Robb

They told us that was the "future plans" but the future may be as many as 5 years away. --Robb

Agreed. But if you can work within the confines of the forum limitations, the upside is that your trip report will be available for years. Something you may all not be aware of, but just because your photo trip report may not get a high volume of views right away, if it's good enough, it will end up in the Photo TR Archive and could have thousands more views over time. For example, have a look at THIS page of the archive. All those Photo TR's now have THOUSANDS of views. I can tell you they all didn't start out that way! So remember this when you post a Photo TR. It may end up having a lot of longevity on TPR. --Robb

Fun trip report dude! Keep them coming! --Robb

Actually...I take back what I said about the eye surgery. I realize now that most eye doctors would be closed on the 4th of July meaning that one scenario out of the three wouldn't be probable... Unless of course it's emergency eye surgery because the snake bit you in the eye, but c'mon, how likely is that to happen?

I don't know about the mid-west parks, but when I worked at Disneyland, 4th of July was one of the 4 days of the year I'd tell people to stay the hell away from the park ! (Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving were the other days) It was one of our absoulte BUSIEST days of the year! Now weather aside, something else to keep in mind is that since the 4th falls on a SATURDAY this year, parks may be busier than the 4th than normal. But if you don't mind large crowds and you're just going to hang out and have fun anyway, go for it! And all things considered, even if it IS busy on the 4th of July, there must be way worse things you could doing on that day....like having eye surgery, or getting dumped by your girlfriend, or get bitten by a snake, or something like that. --Robb