Noxegon

Gah. Only a few days after I'm there. Oh well

I think "per year" might be slightly more accurate. Otherwise you're looking at €17,368 per passenger journey, which seems a tiny bit expensive to me, even for a train. For what it's worth, I can't see this park closing. Every time I've been there it has been very crowded indeed.

Aye, I have to say I was really surprised by how good a coaster this machine is. Shame its operating season is so short.

Thanks.

For those who are local to Coney Island... I'm going to be flying into JFK at 19:40 on a Thursday night in July, apparently one that has Luna Park/Scream Zone open until 23:00. I could probably get there by around 21:30 if all went to plan. Is that realistic for riding the four Luna Park coasters, or am I wasting my time in the attempt? I have the fall back option of going the next day, but it relaxes my trip considerably if I don't have to. Thoughts?

I've been there too, and I think it's actually a pretty nice park. It's a real treasure trove of classic Schwarzkopf machinery that you cannot find anywhere else.

Honestly, I feel the neutering of the dragons was an inevitability in the litigation happy culture that is the United States. It was only a matter of time before a airborne mobile phone clobbered a guest on the other train in a fashion likely to cause permanent injury. Universal gets the punters through the gates anyway, all the more so with Harry Potter, so why risk the cash cow over something that at the end of the day makes very little difference to the average rider?

I still think that Gravity Max is the best of the big Vekoma rides, but I'd rank BSG in a close second. Elissa is right, though; it's no Duelling Dragons.

Yes. There are a few other fabulous Vekoma coasters too, though I will admit that they don't represent a large percentage of their operating rides

Ah now, that's not fair. Vekoma have put out some great coasters over the years, and I'd certainly rate Gravity Max far higher than Saw The Ride.

Did I eat the same meals at SFMM as the rest of you?? Taking standard theme park food as the baseline, I thought that lunch was well above average, and dinner was top notch.

The rides are similar, but I don't think you can call the Gerstlauer version a rip off of Vekoma. If nothing else, the Vekoma version is considerably larger. Gerstlauer Vekoma FWIW, the reason that the Gerstlauer one isn't well known is that the sole installation to date is in an obscure park in south-east Germany, significant largely because it is less than 40 miles away from a charming village in Austria whose name is censored by the forum word filter...

Thanks for a fun day. Particularly enjoyed the Q&A. Very sleepy now...

I'm heading down late; in the US for work, and couldn't get a flight this evening. I'll be there around 11:30, hopefully.

Thanks for that. The Soquet mine train was the only decent coaster in the park. Is the Volare outside the gate still around or is it history too?

Assuming that you're going to Genting tomorrow, I'd be really interested to know if the two coasters shown as SBNO in RCDB are in fact still standing. The web site makes no mention of them any longer. Thanks.

Haw Par is brilliant. Personally I want the car with the tiger on the bonnet...

Yeah, it's about as far away as you can go while staying on the same planet. I know you guys like to stick with Delta, but as a point of reference, the two longest flights in the world right now are both to Singapore; it's 9,535 miles from EWR (18 hours 40 minutes) or for preference 8,770 miles from LAX (17 hours 20 minutes). Both routes operated by Singapore Airlines. I can't imagine taking a flight that long. Sydney to Abu Dhabi was quite bad enough...

If it was Brazil the signs would be in English/Portuguese rather than English/Spanish.

There are no theme parks in Ireland full stop (and the Tayto place does *not* count)

Sorry about that; I didn't intend to come across as bad tempered. What I was trying to say is that some people actually do go for textual reports in addition to the photographic kind. Well written trip reports from people like Dave Sandborg and Dave Althoff are about the last useful contribution to rec.roller-coaster these days... Anyway, to go back on topic, I can't help but wonder whether a photo report like this has the potential to affect the park by showing off some of its more blatant infringements to an internet audience. Given the location it's fairly improbable that the owners of the Harry Potter franchise would have come across it otherwise. I've not been to Indonesia, but is anyone clued in on their attitude to copyrights there? Is it similar to China?

Sorry, but that's simply not true. Every time I put a new trip report up on my site it gets between two and three thousand readers in the first ten days. I could well get ten times that if I did photo trip reports, but who knows? (Great report otherwise, BTW. Bandung is definitely on my hit list).

...and here's why you should hit Iguasu if you're in the area. Iguasu

Yeah, car and driver is generally the way to go if you've got long distances and don't want to drive yourself. We've done it in loads of places; Egypt, Bahrain, Colombia, UAE, Philippines, and probably others I can't think of; there hasn't been a problem yet.

No, we decided to leave Brazil for the TPR trip. The only bit of the country we saw was at Iguacu.