Wolf

I'll never quite get the love for Boulder Dash (it's good, but not great...). Interesting observation is that had I prefered BD to El Toro, T Express would have finished #1. Out of 118 voters, one defector would have changed the #1 entry, and #1 and #2 tied head-to-head. Mitch's poll, as its really obvious this year, is very sensitive to who votes, and tends to be less stable in results for rides with lower rider numbers.

Lot of movement in the polls this year. I think the reduced voting turnout had an effect that might result in this being an outlier year in moving average tabulation. Be really interesting to rerun this year's results by including the polls from the people who voted last year, but not this year, and see what moves.

Mitch's Within-year is a better method to establish the answer to that question. Voters on the overall poll, though, are free to vote however they please, be it based on what was the best that season, or what gave their best ride ever, across their entire riding experience. Is it reliable performance, peak performance, both? Do you just a ride you visit every month different than a far flung ride you rode once, 15 years ago? I tend to vote based on best ride ever, with some attention paid to how often the ride seems to give that performance. I knocked Clementon's Hellcat down this year because the old coaster that was so amazing has been profiled and trim-braked away. But I still voted it a hell of a lot higher than it merited from the weak-sauce ride I got last year.

Beast isn't particularly forceful. It's just long and far-flung. And it's trains are... tragic.

PLEASE READ! Paula didn't say they ordered a "another train", she said they ordered some "extra cars." How do you know they may not have needed these cars anyway for Raven and Legend? I highly doubt that any park in the world is going to go spending the large sum of money that additional PTC cars cost if they didn't feel they needed them for something. --Robb Voyage runs modified PTCs, doesn't it? While those are backwards-compatible with Raven, they are more expensive than standard PTCs, aren't they?

Teufels Rad is a great video opportunity -- and you'll find nothing like it in the US. Check out the Toboggan. Especially after drinking. Come on. It's gentle. It's like Knoebels' spiral slide...

Why? There are racing coasters with similar concepts.

How would seatbelts prevent that?

32-34" If you are 6'5" with a 32-34" inseam, you have a really tall torso. I have a 32" inseam at 5'9", which means your torso is 8" taller than mine, even though we have the same waist height. That's probably what's messing up the restraints for you. You basically have the torso of a man who is 6'10".

Got to the park at 3:30 on Wednesday. Walked right into the area. FJ had a posted 90min line, that was closer to 70 minutes. It looked by 8 pm or so like it was legitimately 90min, however. The bigger issue was that the shops were beyond slammed -- probably had a 1-2 hour line themselves. It was like an Indian train inside. Enchanted Oak Tavern was understaffed, which was criminal. The 45 min line to order was bad enough, but what was worse is that half the tables in the place were empty -- they couldn't get people food fast enough to fill the tables.

What's your inseam?

You're not familiar with the Brothers Grimm, are you?

There's an easy answer to that question. Drive up to Monticello, Indiana, and take a good look at the chassis on Lost Coaster. Then take a look at the photos of the underside of the Timberliner cars. The Timberliners are an idea that's been in the works for a long time.

As much as I love Voyage, I still have to say El Toro is better. Maybe the Timberliners will change that since I'm tall and it's uncomfortable for me to sit in PTC's. How do you deal with the mega-staple on El Toro?

I actually found the front drier than the back. And yes, the lighter rafts go faster. I saw a couple of empty rafts get thrown over the tops of hills.

Agreed. After seeing some of the pics from the event, I can only imagine the line that one Timberliner train would have created. The waits weren't actually that bad. The front car was slammed, but other than the back-back, it was maybe a 1-cycle wait most of the time. There were a lot of people sitting out. Now, there were a lot of people milling around the example cars and taking photos, so perhaps with them running, we would have seen more riders. This makes absoultely no sense to me, unless you're a local. I read reports from this weekend saying The Voyage was giving some of the best rides people ever had on it. Why wait to go? Or unless you've ridden it before. I didn't notice it running any especially better than it did in 2008. The Raven train was interesting, though. Still, I would have crawled over my dead mother to have ridden the Timberliners. Some of us have been waiting awhile for wooden train technology to realize the 1930s are over.

It's pretty standard, although the barbeque place in the hollow below Storm Runner is pretty good. It's worth it to check out the Zoo, too.

I get all of that. I've been to HW before. But I get a chance to get to HW's part of the country about once every 5 years or so. I've done all those other things. I don't care that much about water rides. Let's just say that if the rest of the park burned down tonight and HW only had Voyage, I still would have come for the TimberLiners. I've been waiting for a modern wooden coaster train for 20 years, and I miss 'em by a week.

http://www.holidayworld.com/visit/official-holiwood-nights-page Considering the TimberLiners were the sole reason I decided to go this year... color me disappointed. Bit of a waste of $1,000. And too late to cancel now -- airfare is non-refundable. Oh well -- that'll teach me.

I wonder if they'd run it head to head with the old PTC.

Do you think it's a null zero car (ala B&M), or just that they took the body off of car 1 to repair the broken fiberglass?

Fiberglass bit needs a sign: "This is not a step."

Raven could use a three-train operation.

Heege Freizeittechnik was there.

I saw it. MaxAir or something like that. Looked pretty neat. Nauseating, but neat.