Johnny Upsidedown

The support in the picture above is for the track switch section. The support at the bottom of picture. This gets attached to it http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta/sw132a.jpg . Then you have the dual station and the lift hill will go up the top of the photo straight out. ..

Big update this week.. We have vertical construction, with station parts and the first support going up. Tons of work getting done on the building area and the station house.. Lots of new footers going in and tons of other work happening.. Also gots some photos of the station track, beams and other various coaster parts that are OFF site.. Here is the station area and make sure to check out all 20 of this weeks photos here http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta.html

Here is something that Lance at Screamscape and I were discussing about 3 weeks ago on a possible layout. http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta/manta.jpg It was just an idea I was working on pertaining to how the footers are layed out on the ground.. In the next week I will be out at the park again and if skytower is operating I will redo the drawing to be a little better.. Also some of you may have seen the upcoming photo contest.. My site has also been choosen by Sea World to take part in the drawing.. http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/mantax.html Anybody interested in the Manta logo, I asked Sea World for it and here it is in high resolution. http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta/mantalogo.jpg More soon..

Was looking at some photos of the devastation from IKE. Trying to gauge what Kemah might look like and what kind of damage to the park. This photo http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26643689/displaymode/1107/s/2/framenumber/17/ was taken just across the bridge from Kemah.. Seabrook is just a mile north of Kemah. You can view it for yourself in this map, just zoom into where Keman is and look at the photo in Seabrook.. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26679658

Just saw a report showing Kemah from the air.. If it was live as it said.. The park is still flooded.. It looked like the drop ride was still standing, and looked like the Bullet was still standing, but the rest of the place was flooded pretty bad..

Kemah is starting to get inundated with water.. Take a look. http://www.myfoxhoustonlive.com/ , the webcam updates every 10 minutes or so.. If its not on the right side of the screen click in the middle of the screen for Kemah.. They are saying that Kemah may see between 10 to 20 feet of water so it does not look good for the park..

I was just clarifying that there will be no Mantas. There are only a few aquariums that house the species. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manta_ray The press release says rays, so I would figure it to be like there ray feeding tanks. Lots of sting ray varietys.

Some questions that people have had over the last few pages. I got some answers from Sea World.. The layout will not be released until much later on in the process so maybe first of the year.. No mantas will be in any of the tanks as in the real mantas that some have talked about.. There is some track as in the ones in the photo on previous page at the park.. I was told that there are some supports and other transfer track either at the park or close by.. My guess is they needed the transfer track and station track so that they can be installed inside the building as the building goes up... So there will be a small amount of track and structure that may go up soon but then it will be a while for the real work to start.. I was told that most of the track is finished or getting finished and all track and supports should be in Orlando with in the next 4 weeks or so.. Stay tuned for some other cool things that the park is doing in the coming week pertaining to some websites and ........ well just have to wait and see... Anyway I was out at the park on the 7th. But the sky tower was closed so I only got some photos from around the construction areas.. http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta.html Will be at the park again soon.. I may run up there this weekend and snoop around and see if I can find the track and supports that are allready on site or close by...

Thought you might like these.. http://www.kiextreme.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3751

Yes the stadium is blue and white in the right upper section of the photo... the entrance area is more center of the photo, see the 4 blue fenced areas that is where the entrance is.. The staduim is below the .com part of my name and is halfway between the work site and .com.

Well, things still progressing along. Lots of new footers have gone in and a few surprises. Construction Update August 17th, 2008! Footers are everywhere as this week tons of new footers have gone in. More work on the station area and one of the tanks. Lots of new machinery has shown up and lots of concrete forms have arrived. Something of interest is there are footers going in the entrance area of the Blue Horizons stadium. Check out the latest photos here www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta.html

/\ True, Sam,. Manta and the expansion that has been started at Busch Virginia are the last projects under the old BEC.. AS for the buy out by InBev.. I just hope that some of the rumors about the possible former Busch owners keeping of getting the parks division come true.. Last I heard was the SWSD ride for 2010 is on hold until all the Unbev stuff gets worked out.. So that may be another ride we may never see.

If I lived closer to the park I would probably get more photos more often just to have the documentation of how to build a Manta... Main thing is I live 95 miles from the park so its almost a 200 mile round trip and takes up about 4-5 hours of time to drive to the park run in get the photos run out and drive back home.. I love to see how, and what they are doing as I love construction work and its really cool to see all the things they are doing. I really loved it when Sheirkra was getting built as the park was around the corner from my job and I could just run over at lunch..

I would figure you wont see the layout for several more months.. At least until either most of the footers are in or track starts to go up. Track will arrive at the park in about 2 to 3 months. I was out at the park a week ago on the 20th.. I will go again this coming weekend Aug. 3rd.. Until track goes up I will have bi weekly updates then weekly when track is getting done.. Latest photos are here http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/manta.html

And here is a news article to go along with your posts... http://www.dailyitem.com/0100_news/local_story_207003021.html ELYSBURG -- Thousands of guests had to be evacuated from Knoebels Groves Amusement Resort at 9 p.m. Thursday when a total power outage closed down the park. "There were people on rides when this happened," said co-manager Buddy Knoebel. "Some had to be rescued from atop The Skyway ride when the electricity shut off." The 14-minute-long ski lift ride, which takes passengers 360 feet off the ground, is operated by a computer, so when the electricity shut off, the ride shut down. A backup gas generator had to be turned on and that's how the guests were brought down safely, with no injuries reported. The first indication of a power failure occurred at 8:50, Knoebel said. "There were a series of three glitches in which the power shut off and then came right back on," he said. "At that point, the roller-coaster cars paused at the starter gate and the operation went into a cautionary mode." There were three power glitches followed by a final power outage at 9 p.m. "At this point, the park went dark," Knoebel said. According to the PPL Web site, 417 customers in the area were affected by the blackout. There was no indication when the power might be restored or what caused the outage. Golf carts and maintenance and fire truck headlights were used to illuminate the walkways, so that people could leave safely. "Thankfully, all of this happened at the end of the day, when people were already preparing to go," Knoebel said. "So the evacuation was quite orderly and I didn't get any reports of panic." Lara and Susan Willet, sisters from Shamokin, were two customers about to go on the ferris wheel when the power went out. "I'm not too upset by what happened, but I'm sure glad I wasn't at the top when this happened," said Lara Willet. Knoebel estimated that there were an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 guests at the resort on Thursday. "Some of those customers were staying at our campgrounds. The power is out there, too, so they are going to have to camp in the dark tonight," he said. By 10, most of the resort's parking lots were empty

Thanks for all the great answers on the previous page Norman. I have lots more but will add later on.. Couple simple questions.. 1. Are you a coaster and park enthusiast?? 2. What are some of your favorite rides if you are?? 3. Do you get to do any preopening riding?? Like are you one of the lucky few that get to take the first rides on the coasters as in the first riders while the construction is still getting done (not like media events but first real passenger after the water dummys get a spin?? Thanks

Hi Norm,, I have a couple of questions.. or well lots of questions.... 1. When a park wants a coaster, How many different designs are submitted to the approval of the park for building?? 2. Does a park just say hey we want to have this type of coaster in this area and want it to have certain elements?? 3. Does the park specify how many elements and which types or is it more of a buider suggestion type thing?? 4. Does the designers have more control over what we get as an end product or is it more customer controlled?? 5. How often do you do designs for parks that never happen do you do alot of "bid work" as in do you submit alot of designs that dont happen or is the industry more once a customer is on the hook you just have to get them what they want?? 6. How many hours of CAD work is invovled in the design of the coaster?? 7. How many times does the process go back and forth between park oweners for the designs that you come up with, as in say you design a ride for a park how much back and forth leg work has to be done to the designs to get the park happy with there end product?? 8. Do you as a disigner make suggestions on color of the end product or is it more the parks idea of we want a blue and white coaster what can you do for me thing?? 9.Do you have a certain predisged program with predesigned elemets that you more or less just cut and past elements that are proven ride worthy and you just add say element 1 with element 2 so on and so on to get a finilized product?? 10. How much of the end product is really in the minds of the designers or more or less this is the type product we can get you and we can make certain modification to the design to fit a particular setup?? Thats it for now. Just some basic questions that I have wondered about pertaining to more of the How things are done. Please share what you can.. J>

Since there have been no new name fillings for trademarks I wonder if CF will reuse an old name.. The coaster might be named King Cobra.. Snake name to go with the snake eye and the videos seem to be something low to the ground chasing people. Cant wait tell 2 weeks when the release all the details..

I put in a couple of my construction tour photos and opening day photos of the Kentucky Rumbler.. Cool idea GCI... Listed under John Wiencek... Was going to use my website name but real name works fine...

I think that the AB parks will get sold.. I also think that the new owners will be the people that are in on the deal that helped back the development of Bush parks in Dubai... I think you will see that they will buy the parks and let the current operations staff go at it as they are now... I remember back a few months when there was talk of Busch the 4th wanting to sell the parks division anyway, then they moved the division headquaters to OlandO.. Then came the World of Discovery name change, then came the Dubai deal... Seems totally logical that the money men behind the Dubai deal will be the new owners of the parks division.. Otherwise, my other thought is this, you better go to the parks this year because they will never be the same if they get sold to some investment groupl...

It looks to be official.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25663923 PHILADELPHIA - U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc agreed to a $50 billion takeover by Belgium-based InBev NV, a source familiar with the situation said Sunday, creating the world's largest beer maker. Read all the details above...

Another one is Cheetah at Wild Adventure which has a good drop from the brake run to station..

Best pre lifts.. for me I would pick 3 of them. Hydra with the jojo roll..SOB has a nice beginning and I also pick Cliffhanger at Ghost town in the Sky with its loop right out of the station...

That article from the ECC's first drop is still floating around. I posted that over 6 months ago.. The layout is probably what it will be. The length will be determaind by the overall height. If the news report is correct and they have gone with something more like 200 feet then that would make sense that its in the 4200 foot range. But if they go with more like the 225 then the length should get closer to 5000 feet.. I would guess that the park will do some kind of an annoucement toward the end of the summer like in late August.. Since the news stations are starting to creat a buzz about it.

I am always amazed at how dumb people are in this world.. MORE Authorities said the incident happened just after 2:00 p.m. Saturday. A church group went to the amusement park and a group of boys with the group jumped a fence and entered an area that was marked off limits. One of the boys jumped up and tried to grab someone's feet who was on the Batman ride