AmyUD06

Cedar Fair doesn't need them. Even at their highest profile park, lines rarely exceeed 30 minutes except for their new "big thing" attraction. Efficient general operations + motivated employees > pay-to-play system.

So for excuses for poor guest experience we've gone from "Well, this park is like that, so deal with it" now to "Well, the whole chain is like that, so deal with it (but other chains aren't)"? Wow. Fact: Cedar Fair has fewer parks to worry about than Six Flags. Fact: Cedar Fair has generally much better operations than Six Flags. Conclusion: Six Flags needs to sell off parks to a point where they can run the ones they want to focus on as best as they possibly can be run. For all the "good" the Premier acquisition did in terms of ride additions, I feel that SF has been on a steady decline since. Their massive expansion and rebranding of parks to SF parks set up the future regimes for failure with too much to do and too little money. I say bring it back to the original 6 park count (Great Adventure, over Texas, over Georgia, Mid-America, Magic Mountain, and pick one to replace Astroworld) from the Time Warner era and be done with it.

Well, Arrow's not around anymore so they need to copy someone...

Finished some more support work. The paying job keeps me pretty busy, so time to work on the coaster is slim. Making supports is such a tedious process (don't hold your breath on realistic beam joints for this one )

Batman: TR El Toro GASM Kingda Ka Nitro (Chiller, Batman) (Chiller, Robin) Rolling Thunder, Left Medusa Skull Mountain Runaway Mine Train Rolling Thunder, Right Superman: UF BBL Treasure Train Dark Knight

Went to the park today (Sun 8/17); I hadn't been there since '99. WOW. I really forgot how small and poorly-done everything about this park is except the scenery. Half of the rides were closed, the half that were open had HORRIBLE disptach times, and I'd say maybe 25% of food stands were even open. Superman was being operated by maintenence staff, and was running incredibly slowly. Great ride, of course. Batwing was running one side of the station, one train only, and took forever. Joker's Jinx stacked for 5-10 minutes each cycle without fail; same with Roar and Wild One. Mind Eraser and the river rapids ride not even open at mid-day. Waterpark operations were painfully slow too. They need more tubes in cycling at each slide, or is that just another SF ploy to make money by pushing the tube rentals? The lazy river and area inside it was closed due to lack of staff. Roar and Wild One are the only unique (as in non-duplicate) coasters the park has, though the nearest Superman clone is a good ways away. While those three are good in their own right, they are nothing special; the park desperately needs a signature attraction and more staff if they want to improve their image and reputation. Or, maybe they're content catering only to the local crowd who doesn't think to expect good things from a park. If the rumors of SF closing or selling off parks soon are true, I see this near the top of the list for the chopping block. The scenery was nice, but the staff (those that were there) was inefficent and unfriendly and only half of everything was open. If I had paid money to go to the park today I would have been VERY upset. I could understand this on a weekday, but c'mon...it's a Sunday in August. Just one more reason I won't be getting a SF pass in '09.

Great Nor'Easter (and Sea Serpent, the boomerang at Wildwood) are white because every other color gets faded VERY quickly by the salt water breezes blowing in. You'll notice that most large metal structures, like coasters, are white at boardwalks. Cheaper in the long run for the owners to not have to paint the ride every two seasons (about how long Nor'Easters pink paint lasted).

Yeah, because the world really needs more of these.

Update: Trackwork is done (as much as I'm doing, in other words) and lift hill/drop supports in place. B&M_Hyper_01a1.nltrack Updated track file. A view from the crest of the drop. Going down. An unconventional B&M calls for unconventional supports. No caption.

Six Flags parks are on the same level, if not worse, in terms of operations, experiences, and park food cost. DEFINATELY worse on the staff scale of things, compared to CP, KI, and Dorney at least. The only parks cheaper are private owned non-moving carnivals with less than a quarter of the ride selection. Seriously, where does this CF hate come from? You can either have big corporate parks with lots of rides (and the pitfalls that come from big corprate parks) or you have small parks with low prices and staff that're all related to each other. You can't have both as it stands now. On topic, I too bought a CF Platinum pass when I went to Ohio earlier. Two days at CP and one day at KI. I've since gone to Dorney once (and may again by the end of the season) and am hoping to go to KD this coming weekend. I've gotten my money's worth.

Eager for an update.

Just something I threw together in approximately 45 minutes. Yeah, yellow Gs...I'm sure the old '20s coasters had worse. Double Dip (Wooden Shuttle).nltrack

Backstory: Upset with seeing comments on various forums that they have lost any sense of innovation or originality, B&M released information on their first-ever Gigacoaster. Still in the prototype stages, the coaster requires a few final touches, but the company hopes to use this ride to finally give Intamin some competition when it comes to world records. Statistics: Maximum Speed: 96 mph Peak Height: 375 ft First Drop: 271 ft, 100* Length: 9110 ft (~1.7 miles) Lift Hill : 57* LIM-powered at 40 mph Features: -700* and 540* helixes -6 airtime hills -270* climbing turn -270* dive-and-climb turn -50mph, 2.5g boost launch into lift hill. World Records: -Longest coaster -Fastest non-launched coaster -Tallest non-launched coaster Color scheme and supports are obviously in the works! -Passes E-Stop Test (in so much as that it will never crash due to e-stop activation; there are times when it won't restart that I blame on NL and not the design). -Passess Tunnel Test. Comments apprciated. Yeah, I know it needs a bit more smoothing and fine-tuning of banking angles. B&M_Hyper_01a.nltrack

Not quite the same, but I paid a set of kids $20 to get on the front row of Laser at Dorney Park yesterday. For those that don't know, the miniscule size of the station does not allow for waiting for any individual row. There is an attendant that lets 28 people (full capacity of one train) into the station at a time, so whoever is in the front of that group gets pick of where they want. You may think "well, that sounds easy...just wait outside the cutoff point and count 28 people." I thought it seemed easy too, but the layout right at the cutoff point makes doing so without being physically rude very difficult. After several failed attemps, ending up two people behind the cutoff each time, I was tired of waiting and offered these kids who were talking about getting on the front $20 to let me and my friend have it. They thought about it for a while, and then said okay. "Why go for the front when the back is the better ride?" you may ask...well, with the ride coming down at/before the end of this season and going who-knows-where, I wanted to make sure I'd remember the experience as vividly as possible.

Grotto's pizza...good? Wow, to each their own I guess. Even for Delaware I'd say it's sub-par. I'd put Margarita's (Newark, DE) or even Pizza Hut and Papa Johns above them. Of Course, I may just be spoiled by Three Brothers (Seaside), Sawmill (also Seaside) Jonuzi's (Atlantic City), and Mack Pizza (Wildwood). But yeah, Delaware is sorely lacking in the Amusement Park department. The one pitiful excuse for a park (Blue Diamond) we had is now "closed indefinitely" for the rides section. On the plus side, it's only an hour and a half to Dorney, an hour to SFGAdv, or 2 hours to SFA from the northern part. The mostly-true stereotype of it being a big gay community hangout keeps a lot of tourist types away. Plus the fact that it's in Delaware, which has nothing else to really draw people in, especially down in Slower Lower. Anyone passing through the state going north or south on major roads is only in the state for 10-15 minutes (or an hour, if DelDOT is at work) unless they're trying to take the Chesapeak Bay Bridge-Tunnel to Cape May-Lewes Ferry (IE really out of the way scenic routes).

Yellow vertical Gs are not a bad thing.

Reminds me a lot of the Intamin Flight Trainer. Shame the only two I know if the country got taken down.

Maverick was incredibly smooth for me the same week as this TR. The back row was absolutely brutal, ramming my neck into the OSTRs despite my best efforts to keep my head back against the headrests. And I will never understand why everyone complains about Mantis. I love it both front row and back, and I don't get any kind of major headbanging or groin pain ether. Tip: When the ops try to adjust the bicycle seat up in to your special place just before locking the adjustment, move it back down a little bit, but not so far that your shoulders are compressed by the OSTRs. Lock your knees and keep them with your heels back against the car (like they reccomend), and keep your head back against the rest. Danian, you do realize that the "Intamin Stand-Ups" are the prototypes for the B&M Standups of the mid/late-90s, right? They were from before B&M split off.

1. Okay, so there was one spot of red Gs when riding through the back row on the reverse trip, but it doesn't break 6. 2. Mind telling me where? 3 & 4 - no less so than any number of the countless Eurofighters that flood this board.

Hmm... Cedar Fair cuts down trees, sometimes to install new rides and sometimes for no reason at all. Six Flags tears down rides, sometimes to install new rides and sometimes for no reason at all. I'll take less trees, thank you.

Still working on the supports (been a busy couple of weeks), but here's the track file to get your fix. Arrow_Launched-Loop_01a.nltrack

I'm curious to see how you hit 150mph. Only way I've been able to do it is with a vertical-down LIM section, but then it hits 6gs levelling out.

How did you like those new Vekoma trains on Python? They look like they have you sit a lot higher which seems like it would make the lack of heartlining on Arrow/Vekoma coasters more apparent.

Who: Myself, friend Ian Where: Cedar Point, King’s Island When: Monday 6/30 – Friday 7/4 Day One, Monday: Day One was originally supposed to be a travel day (9 hour drive) and go to CP to get our Platinum Passes processed at night and maybe hit one or two rides. A delayed start put us in our hotel in central Ohio at 7:30 PM, and with an hour and a half drive to CP we decided it wasn’t worth it that night. The forecast called for perfect weather on Monday and Tuesday with very likely thunderstorms on Thursday. We decided to do CP on Tuesday, KI on Wednesday, and go back to CP on Thursday to finish up other things in case the weather turned out bad. Day Two, Tuesday: A delayed start due to hitting up a local speakeasy on Day One meant we got to the park at 10:30. Processed our online-purchased passes in literally 5 minutes (by comparison, it took me 45 minutes to process my ’08 SFGA pass at the end of the ’07 season). Got in the park and hit Demon Drop (all ride reviews at the end). Disaster Transport (30 minutes) and Wicked Twister (30 minutes) were next. Stopped in the retro arcade and played some classic (as in mechanical) “video” games. This is one of my favorite parts about this park. On to Corkscrew (<15 minutes for front row) and Magnum (<30 minutes for front row). Gemini had a massive line for that ride so we passed it for the time being, headed to Maverick but it was down. Hit Mean Streak (30 minutes for front row), go back by Maverick; still down. Next was Cedar Creek Mine Ride (<15 minutes for back row). We see Maverick is just about to re-open so we get in the line outside the queue, and once they start filling it we’re right on the lake before you go in to the old log flume station. 1.5 hour wait. Honestly from here I forget the order, but we did Blue Streak (walk on), Raptor (40 minutes), and Millennium Force (<50 minutes) before heading back to Maverick with 10 minutes to closing. We get in line and are about where we were before when the ride breaks down again at 10:12. Knowing we have another day, we set our limit at 10:45. At approximately 10:40 they start walking people off the trains that are on the block brakes before the station, and we call it a night. It amazed me that they were still attempting to fix the ride after “closing” so those in line could ride; not something Six Flags would do. Then again…on the walk out, we see that Millennium has gotten stuck on the lift hill and they’re doing an evacuation using the sliding cart thing. We get near the entrance and I hear some dance music coming from the Picnic area; there’s an employee party going on. Perhaps they the rides with long lines were “breaking” so the crews could go to the party, mm? ::smirk:: Either way, we covered 11 of the 15 non-kiddie coasters, missing only Dragster, Gemini, Iron Dragon, and Wildcat. Day Three, Wednesday: We got to King’s Island right at opening. Hit the Beastie (or whatever they’re calling it now), walk on for back row. Head to The Beast (1 of 2 reasons for even including this park), and have a 3-train wait for the front row. Continuing around the park in a loop, Vortex is next, 2-train wait for front row. Firehawk (my other reason) was the longest wait of the day at 45 minutes, followed closely by Flight of Fear at about 30 minutes. Racer was a walk on for the back row on the red side. Adventure Express was a 10 minute wait. Son of Beast was about a half an hour and the biggest waste of time of the trip. Top Gun (er…Flight Deck) was a walk-on for back row. Invertigo was a 3-train wait for “back” row. Finally, Italian Job (Back Lot whatever) looked to be a 25 minute wait, but we lucked out when all groups in front of us were 3 or 4 and they needed to, so it ended up being 15 minutes. We did every coaster except for the Vekoma SFC (I think it’s called “Reptar” something or other). We leave the park at 4:30; 11 coasters in 6.5 hours with taking some time to eat and smoke here and there. We would’ve hit the water park but we didn’t expect to do so many coasters in such a small amount of time so didn’t bring the bathing suits and weren’t about to pay park prices for one. Day Four, Thursday: At the end of Day Two, I checked the forecast on weather.com using my phone and saw that the chance of severe thunderstorms for Sandusky was 60% until noon, so we targeted getting back to Cedar Point then. We arrived at 12:30 and it seemed like everything except the tallest rides were running despite some mild rain. The lot was empty. We walked right up to the entrance gates (for which there were only three open) and as soon as we got in we saw a Dragster train launch. Headed right there, and despite a 10-minute breakdown we were on-and-off in 30 minutes. Since our mission for the day was hit what we missed on Day one, Gemini was next. 2-train wait for front row on the red side. Iron Dragon was a walk on for back row. Wildcat was broken, so we went and hit some other rides again. Maverick was a just under an hour wait for the back row. Mantis was a 3-train wait for the front. Blue Streak was a 1-train wait for the front. Raptor was a 10-minute wait for the back. Headed back to Wildcat which was now open but a 30-minute wait (!!!) so we passed. Went on Cedar Downs and the antique cars, went back to Maverick for a 45 minute wait for the front row. Bought an on-ride photo for the first time in my life and did some more souvenir shopping. Took the train back to the Midway and saw Wildcat was still a 30 minute wait, so passed again. Walked around and took some photos and video, and then took the Skyride back to the front and called it a night. Day Five, Friday: Left the hotel around 10:00 and made the 9-hour drive back to Delaware, hitting some major traffic where a car had overturned in Maryland, likely due to the heavy rain which was in Ohio the day before. All said and done, an awesome trip. 25 different coasters and several non-coasters in three days, not bat at all. Coaster Reviews: Cedar Point Blue Streak – Rode both front and back row. Great experience both times, very glad they haven’t trimmed this at all like Dorney has trimmed Thunderhawk. Cedar Creek Mine Ride – Good classic, kind of rough in some transitions but what do you expect from an near 40-year-old Arrow? Biggest gripe is the one-locking-position lap bars. Corkscrew – VERY impressed with how smooth this was (front row). It boggles my mind how smooth they can keep this, yet SFGA’s Great American Scream Machine is so rough by comparison. Disaster Transport – Not a huge fan of the new day-glo decorations, compared to the original themeing, and it seemed that there weren’t as many lights on the scenery inside the ride as I remember, but I love it. Bobsleds are dying off way too quick for me. Gemini – Good smooth ride on the Red side. The transition into the last helix is very sudden, but good all around. Iron Dragon – Rough and not all that forceful. Decent enough since it was a near walk-on, but I wouldn’t wait for it. Jr. Gemini - Not ridden Magnum XL-200 – Rougher than I remember, but that was over 10 years ago. Still good views and ride. Mantis – One of my favorites at this park, both back and front row were very smooth and very forceful. No injuries to the important bits, but I know how to adjust the seat properly before taking off. It’s been almost a decade since the last one of these was built, and it’s time for B&M to make another. Maverick – One word: incredible. Easily the best coaster I’ve ever ridden (front row). This coaster alone was worth the $500 the trip cost me. Only one very minor complaint: the back row is TOO forceful laterally through transitions, and bruised my neck on the OSTRs despite my best efforts to keep my head in the groove. Mean Streak – Not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, but it is rough. Still enjoyable though. Millennium Force – Good, but overhyped IMHO. Maybe front or back row would make it better, but we rode in the middle and while good it wasn’t really anything too special. Raptor – I forgot how forceful this was (in a good way). Easily my favorite of all B&M inverts. Top Thrill Dragster – WOW. Having ridden Kingda Ka I new what to expect for the most part, but this blew it out of the water. The linear launch force and lack of OSTRs ranks this higher thn Ka. Wicked Twister – Awesome in back row, more entertaining than I thought it would be. Wildcat – Not ridden. Woodstock Express – Not ridden King’s Island Adventure Express – Surprisingly good, great themeing. Backlot Stunt Coaster/Italian Job Stunt Track – Good themening, seemed like all of the effects were working. The launch in to the first helix was a pleasantly forceful surprise. Beast – What can be said about this awesome classic that hasn’t been said a million times? Disappointed with the trimming, but is still my favorite wooden coaster (now that Hercules is dead). Fairly Odd Coaster/Beastie/Scooby Doo – Tight squeeze for two average-build males, but still good with some airtime in the back row. Firehawk – Very impressive. Much better than Superman at SFGA. This and Beast made the trip to KI worthwhile. Flight Deck/Top Gun – Second best Arrow Suspended I’ve been on, good forces but a little short. Flight of Fear/Outer Limits – I love Premier LIM coasters and this is no exception. I was impressed with how much of the theme they kept when losing the Outer Limits license. Invertigo – Intense and very smooth for a Vekoma. Little Bill’s Giggle Coaster – Not ridden Racer – Bring back the reverse-run side! Otherwise, good. Rugrats Runaway Reptar – Not ridden Son of Beast – Crap. Worst ride of the trip. The first helix did a number on my entire upper body (literally felt my organs bouncing around), and we were in the front car! Maybe the loop made this worthwhile back when it had it, but it certainly isn’t anymore. It needs some Intamin or GCI trains; maybe that would help. Vortex – Awesome classic Arrow, again very smooth and makes me wonder how SFGA let GASM fall into the state it is in. Park Reviews: Cedar Point Still my favorite park so far. Operations were incredibly smooth even with bins for loose articles; staff was very friendly and helpful throughout the day. Food prices are to be expected from a park, but at least the food was decent. Place was very clean and I didn’t think the trashcans were too numerous (no worse that SFGA with the parade route constantly marked). King’s Island I remember this place being bigger, but it still has a good collection of coasters and flats and nice atmosphere. Sadly, aside from Beast and now Firehawk, there’s nothing unique or outstanding to necessitate a trip to this park. I hope that Project 2009 will do something about that. Overall Highs -Smoother operations everywhere (take that, Six Flags’ locker policy!) -26 coasters in 3 days -Great weather Lows <>-Son of Beast -Driving for several hours through the middle of nowhere -King’s Island removing King Cobra (Pictures and videos to come if I feel like uploading them and editing language in the videos!)

Six Flags, in a financial nightmare, is forced to sell off their coasters that've been dismantled but are still hanging around in junyards. Hard Rock Park has taken advantage of the situation and picked up both Python from SF America and Vampire from Kentucky Kingdom for a steal of a price. Unfortunately, both rides were in such a state of dissarray that there is no way for them to ever operate again...on their own. HRP has now contracted Vekoma to engineer one ride from the parts of these two, developing new pieces as necessary. To attempt to save Hard Rock Park from the brink of extinction, the new management is adding a new segment for the 2009 season: The 80's. With bright neon colors and an on-board audio system blaring some of the best new-wave and synth-pop from the decade, Flashback '88 promises to leave its riders shouting "Totally radical, dude!" Statistics: Max Height: 125ft at top of spike Max Speed: 50mph Inversions: -78ft tall vertical loop -58ft tall vertical loop Track Length: 1043ft each way. (Yes, there are yellow and even some red Gs when riding in the back. It's an Arrow/Vekoma, what do you expect?) And, video for those without NL: Flashback88 (Arrow Launched Loop).nltrack