Garet

Just screw Corona. I know everyone's tired of it and it breaks my heart to see horrible stories like the one above and mine pales in comparison, but it's just this last month has totally beaten me. I appreciate that Korea's biggest outbreak total so far has been 7,600 a day and all the strictness keeps us that way compared to other countries but Korea was the first hit country after China so I live in a country that's had it the longest now vs all my family and friend's being in one of the worst hit (The U.K.). We were finally going to take my son back to the UK this winter and do the 10 day home quarantine but as Omicron got worse we made the choice only I would head back, finally see everyone, see a certain musical as a Christmas present (see profile picture). and do the mandatory 1 day stay in the government facilities for Europeans on return and risk it being upgraded to 10 days like Korea did to the African countries. However, Korea does not accept anything but negative PCR tests to come back in. Some friends got Corona and just can't get back because it can take weeks or worse over a month for PCR to not show traces anymore. Most countries you can show you recovered from Corona but not Korea and I can't risk being separated that long. I think it just finally got to me today because the city I work in has become the hotspot of the country. It is home to most of the U.S. soldiers and way back in early 2020, at the start of the outbreak, the cases were separated into soldiers vs the city in the daily totals but that got dropped a long time ago and it became a combined total. A few weeks ago our city's cases began to rise but people weren't sure where. Then the social media of the base said they were in the worst outbreak and highest numbers since the pandemic started but there would be no restrictions. Then this Saturday they did announce restrictions. So today the city decided to restore the divided totals. 425 total for the city. Today Korea's total is tracking to be around 3,500-4,000 tomorrow so over 10% of the whole country in just this one city. 171 citizens of the city and 254 from the U.S. bases. So a very small population of the city make up almost 60% of the city's cases. Looks worse, when you put that against the country total. I'm not American or a soldier and I do love living here but people have been steering clear of us lately and even my son has started to notice. Even the 171 makes the Korean side also one of the worst in the country but with all the secrecy before of combined numbers there's a lot of resentment of where people think it has spread from. Edit: Wednesday's total ended up 4,300 so still around 10% from our city. Edit 2: The city put out Wednesdays numbers. 163 citizens but the number from the US army base and airbase rose to 383. Since my school is located very nearby I had 1/15 students show up to one of my classes and 3/16 another so starting to worry about my job. Edit 3: The media is now pointing the finger at foreigners causing the city outbreak and have already turned it into 'because Americans party during corona' and seem to be setting up a potential narrative of it being responsible for Omicron starting to get into Korea: https://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/A2022011316500001390?did=NA&fbclid=IwAR20Iu3HMlYqyhE63LTRxed0-kOOL6NI9o_Sx05VnghQuWWL5CMjNjYYIVU

Might be too late but when checking my listings, just noticed Regina from Tobu Zoo is on the poll when it didn't run in 2020.

^One of the cubs, Kangsan the youngest of the 5, sadly passed away yesterday. The park has introduced a bunch of merch and new characters based around the 5 cubs and pushing them hard on social media to coincide with the year of the tiger, and had even been running some dance competition based around Kangsan specifically just a few days ago but it's been removed from the site.

Six Flags 'What Were You Expecting?' Adventure

How did his parent's not think about that when choosing the name Randy? Even if Fyock is pronounced wildly different, there's almost no chance the dad ever made it through his school life without another kid picking up on the similarities. Unless he was born looking like this guy: Then yes, Randy Fyock would totally fit.

^ Which is why I think Dubai, or more Dubai a decade ago, is potentially the closest comparison there is on how this could all play out. Look at all the horror articles when all the big hotels/theme parks/water parks first appeared of all the tourists who would get arrested, especially drunk or single ones. It does still happen and there are a lot of things still culturally unacceptable that can land someone who didn't research in trouble but it does seem like the punishments leaned more towards fines/deportation as they tried to work out how to enforce the laws without scaring off tourists and business.

And despite those stats, this ride still ended up with much more restrictive restraints than VelociCoaster.

^^ We went to the Maldives in the end for our honeymoon instead of Dubai (yes, I'm a bad enthusiast, but at this rate, the Dubai roller-coasters could outlive the beautiful coral and wildlife... snorkeling with reef sharks! so Dubai could wait) but if we had chosen Dubai, even as a straight married couple we knew showing too much affection in public would be seen as discourteous and could lead to trouble and Saudi Arabia is much stricter than that.

^ Which would still be pocket change to the mega-rich of Saudi Arabia who are probably going to provide funding the park.

^ I think these guys stayed pretty dry on it.

So thanks to Corona plus young children, my list is completely unchanged. To submit it, do I just log-in and log-out or should I also unlock and re lock last years list?

Sorry if this is too off-topic but has anyone else randomly stopped receiving notifications when a topic is replied to? I checked my user settings and notifications haven't changed but stopped getting e-mails a few days ago. I thought maybe they were being sent to the junk folder but they aren't there too.

I'm curious how Disneyland Paris is doing lately. France just announced some measures against the UK due to Omicron including not allowing UK tourists into the country but if the situation worsens I can see them expanding restrictions. Last year Disney Paris ended up closed for half the year. With most European countries really struggling, I wonder if they will close again after Christmas for the quiet months.

I can't seem to find any evidence of it online, and I want to say Paris quite a few years ago, but I feel like I have definitely seen a similar sized Starflyer with flying harnesses on them.

I just got back from seeing Spider-Man: No Way Home. Very mild spoilers: Putting this part first to try and bump the actual review part being displayed in the side bar of the forums. First of all, in these corona times don't wait with the crowd, leave after the first post-credits. The after the credits is Doctor Strange 2's trailer so I'm sure that will hit YouTube in a couple of weeks. There's not even anything spoilery in the trailer for them to hold off for it to be after the credits. About the movie, I think people who love Marvel films because of the 'it's all connected' ideology will really love this. It has a lot of easter eggs and references for a lot of things and unlike previous movies it does feel like they're now starting to incorporate the TV side of things now DIsney+ is around with fun references and Easter Eggs before Dr Strange 2 goes fully in on incorporating the Disney+ plots into the films. One grown man behind me was weeping hard in this movie at some inspirational points (Which annoyingly made him the one person in a packed cinema who pulled off their mask). I mostly check out these movies because they're fun over the connections so I'm not as invested as that but still had a good time. It's definitely a love letter to Spider-Man and feels like an end to his trilogy. Considering each one has been Spidey teaming up with an MCU father figure, it'll be interesting to see what happens next, it does feel like Sony have left the door open for more MCU films but also at a point where it can be just a Spider-Man movie on its own than trying to mold into the MCU movie formula if that makes sense. However, I know a lot has been said about who or won't be in it, and I won't ruin that here, but I kind of think trying to keep all the plot secret worked against the movie a little bit. It pulls you out of the movie a little bit because there's a bit of your brain keep waiting for something that may or may not happen. A lot of the movie does play out how you would expect if you've seen the trailers so people should check their expectations a little. There weren't many gasps or applauses in my screening and it was a first showing so full of big Marvel fans, so it seems the movie was playing out as much as they expected. I had a blast with this movie overall but I think weirdly this is a movie I will enjoy more on a second time when I can just enjoy the story instead of wondering where/if the next reveal will come from. Mild-ish spoilery last comment: There was one moment I would have actually probably gasped in surprise at it being included if Marvel themselves hadn't dropped major hints in recent interviews. However Spider-Man did release here 2 days earlier than the USA and Korea just got Disney+ so I'm a bit backdated on the TV side of things. One of my friends who has watched everything in order said that anyone who is completely up to date with all the TV side will probably expect it when they see the movie on Friday and won't see it as a spoiler like I did.

There's a lot of evidence suggesting that more severe and unpredictable weather is going to happen more and more often in the future from Global Warming so it just isn't feasible for parks to close on maybes and forecasts for severe weather. Not just the loss financially but people with last minute cancelled plans are more likely to hit up social media or try and get a quick buck with a sob story on local news that can cause bad PR if the parks get it wrong and close unnecessarily. I bet no media would cover it and there'd be no positive PR if they get it right because that won't get views. Best case scenario is parks invest in shelters and increase employee training on severe weather training on how to get everyone off rides and queues into a safer area until a storm/tornado passes.

I feel like parks make much better roller-coasters when they just try for something fun over being 'world-first' or 'continent/country-tallest/fastest/steepest' etc. Rides like Maverick and Velocicoaster come to mind. Because those early rendering look like this roller-coaster could be a lot of fun.

This is my wife and I's biggest worry when we plan our once in a lifetime trip. We just really don't plan on staying on-site to try and squeeze that saved money, by going cheap accommodation the rest of the 2-3 weeks, into trying nicer restaurants than we normally would in Disney Springs/City Walk and the main goal of a cruise on the end of the trip since most of them here in Asia are aimed at catering to the Chinese and their wallets, which means changing parts of the ships into more casinos and cuisine aimed at keeping them happy so we want to try one while on this trip but the worry is that even budgeting for all the fast passes of multiple parks and Genie+ etc that we will have 0 chance due to not being resort guests which was a complaint we heard a lot from others under the previous fastpass+.

I'm not sure this is true, the Facebook stories are gone and I would need to search for Robb's posts but they made it clear in their tips that you can reserve again after a cooldown period not when you've used the pass. Edit: Bill beat me to it. 2nd edit: Found the photos from Facebook so reposting here since I don't think they are on the TPR forums, hope the mods don't mind, they were a bit scrambled so hopefully they're in the right order.

For parks though Zamperla's are a pretty great company for them. The rides aren't terribly expensive, most of their rides seem very maintenance friendly, I've almost never seen a Zamperla ride down for maintenance. There's a bunch here in Korea and the parks here run 365 days a year in -20C weather to 38C weather. There are copies of Zamperla rides everywhere so I assume parks wouldn't wait on parts very long either. Although, for some rides I doubt they'd need parts because I'm pretty sure those powered helix coasters will outlive us all. The general public won't really care if it's from Intamin or Zamperla. Isn't this rumored to be a family launch coaster like Pony Express? I've never ridden it but that ride seems to have it's fans.

Glad to see this ride isn't going anywhere because this park gets through a staggering amount of rides compared to others its size. Not sure if it's still there but one of the subway station exits had a tunnel filled with pictures of all the closed rides and it was insane how many there were. And since then a bunch more have gone including the old ferris wheel and drop tower.

I appreciate you taking the extra time to post them here, I sometimes forget to check my Facebook often enough and the stories are already gone.

Do they still have to be in the USA? Most of the one's I've ridden lately in Asia, even the ones without lap bars, man just the station. Pretty much all the places people would have been are just replaced with CCTV cameras and loud speakers reminding people to not stand up or even just a single sign at the top of the drops.

I don't see a themed log flume happening here, but if Cedar Point ever went that route, Hopkins made one for Everland that has all the drops based around one tower of turntables. Despite what the ponchos would suggest, you really don't get very wet, it's not too big a footprint, and you could get away with a small mountain with some theming on the one turntable tower with some indoor scenes around each turntable for the inside.

^Luge and alpine coasters seem to be most forgiving. My issue is my son can't ride alone so the weight limit is for both of us on one car. Most Luge's here run a limit of 120kg per car. Some luge and alpine coasters are 100kg though combined. 90kg is more for some zip-lines and water park slides. I remember some parks in China had 80kg limits for some bigger roller-coasters in their Lotte World knock-off park.