GuruGuys

I feel sorry for your cousin - he was stuck in row 2 for many of the rides, although 3 that you were in wasn't much better! The contrast between row 1 and row 2 is quite amazing isn't it? -GG

Where were you AMF! I was hoping to see you out there again, you would have helped with the 'cheer' section! Jim and I (Gemini?) rode another 15 rides or so after we finished (before and after lunch). Lunch was great with the group that formed - I learned a lot more about various coasters and parks! Its nice to see everyone (including Robb and Ellissa) so enthusiast to answer all our questions even though you two have probably answered the same questions 1000's of times! You guys also have a VERY well behaved baby! I think she only cried once and that was when we were on the Bullet... probably because she wanted to ride! And as for the coaster - I have no doubt that it is running as rough as it ever has in my 300+ rides right now. As I stated next last week, rows 2-7 are really rough, especially row 2 and especially the rows on the wheels! I feel really bad for the group that sat in row 2 for the first 6-7 rides or so, I nor Jim would have even ridden there that many times in a row and we are pretty "Bullet Proof". The seats 10-12 are actually not as bad as the other seats IMO, at least not with the 'shimmy' going in the first 15 seconds (which is what really gets to me). Once you learn to ride the first drop you can counter a lot of the aggression with body positioning however you can't counter that shimmy! For the one asking about the weather, it was nice but a little warmer than earlier in the week. Much better than 2 weeks ago, and a heck of a lot better than if Robb would have made it when the ride opened in the summer! Robb would have never made it up the lift in the upper 100+ degree heat and humidity, I know I wouldn't have! The footage he shot from the hill is some of the coolest video we have ever seen on the Bullet - can't wait for it to be posted! Finally, after meeting a lot of the TPR are guys and a couple of them that have been on the trips, I am REALLY considering finding a way to get the money for next years East Coast trip. Would be really fun and a good way for me to knock out quite a few of my 'want to ride most' list! -GG

Well I had a blast! What about y'all?!? -GG

I kid did throw up tonight. They had to shut down rows 9-11 for awhile. -GG

I thought I posted earlier that it would be open yesterday. Regardless, it opened yesterday. I rode tonight about 25 times or so as it was dead. Ran really slow and was really rough in many of the seats. Strangely enough, row 5 provided the best ride, it hasn't done that in a long time. Perhaps with empty trains and a slow ride 5 is the better seat. It was when the ride first opened up and was running low 70's, but quickly became one of my least favorite seats when it ran 64-66's. Amazing what a few seconds difference can make on which seat I like the best. I usually like 2R, but it was almost unbearable for me today. The back row was nice as always, rough but worth it. Hope it is running fast for TPR on Sunday. All the ride ops are aware TPR is coming as they have been told to come in early for work that day -GG

It should be back open today. I saw them doing some maintenance on the first big hill yesterday and they test ran it last night with some of the maintenance guys on it. They have added barbed wire around the back parts of the fence and more mesh screen on parts near on entrance queue as well. -GG

As far as I know it should be open by then. Last I heard they are trying to get it open by Monday. -GG

Looks like this weekend may be all that is needed to get the Bullet running again!!! -GG

The Boardwalk Bullet will be closed this weekend and based on the little information I know I doubt it will be open by next weekend, but that is just my guess. -GG

Theres the Armand Bayou nature reserve just down from Kemah. Its free and a nice way to spend some time. There is also The Main Event entertainment complex about 15 minutes from Kemah. No kiddie coaster but a good entertainment complex with a couple of decent motion simulators and good selection of games, bowling alley, bar, etc. I take friends from out of state by Fry's Electronics if they have never been to one (most of my friends are electronics geeks like myself . The one in Clear Lake, about 10 minutes from Kemah, has a 1:1 scale model of the completed space station mounted on the roof of the store which is pretty neat. And about the air conditioning, the Starbucks opens pretty early at the Boardwalk so they might get air conditioning in there by 8am and they can always hang out in the hotel lobby before then. -GG

Ah! I don't think I can make it then. Perhaps you'll be around later in the day and I can at least meet you. Sundays on the Boardwalk Bullet pretty slow until the late afternoon/early evening hours, you usually don't have to wait in line at all. Hopefully the weather will play nice etc! Great to see the Bullet getting the publicity and treating everyone well! -GG

Many of us will be at Fiesta Fest that weekend. I might return by 1-2pm Sunday however. What time will you be filming? They had a hard time getting enough people for the Boardwalk Bullet commercial, eventually they had to let the public in to get a full train during the last few shots and even then there were a few empty seats. -GG P.S. When I try to email you my emails are rejected. I'm trying to get my system admin to fix this. Error: 550 it says.

A lot of people have asked how Robb got into the industry. I'm not sure how he did, but I can tell people how I did, and why I am no longer in it. I grew playing games on the 2600, then C64, Amiga, NES, etc etc. In the early days of the NES I used to call Nintendo up and give them tips. It was a free -1800 number and Nintendo was in its infancy so it was easy to get a hold of someone there. I remember a few of the "gameplay counselors", Brett Gow in particular. I think Rob Lengang was another. I remember giving them the unlimited free man trick on stage 3-2 on SMB where you bounce off the turtle on the stairs at the end. A bunch of my friends and I did it on accident and they at Nintendo hadn't heard of it before. Brett kept calling me back to ask for more advice on how to repeat the trick he finally did so. From then on I had his direct extension to call. I found a few other tricks, like how to get the turtle to walk on air on 3-3, and soon I was able to talk to several of the counselors when I would call. My name got around and when publications like Boys Life magazine wanted to do a story reemergence of video games they would give them my name. Both Boys Life and Omni magazine did articles which featured me even though I was not a Boy Scout and had never read Omni! It established some contacts for me at the age of 14 and when I turned 17 I was able to go to the Winter CES as press since I wrote a fanzine (fan made magazine). At this time the CES was being taken over by video games which is why they started the E3 show a few years later. I was able to meet a lot of contacts at the CES. I met people like Tommy Tallarico before he was 'big' and came across the publisher Sandwich Island Publications. I started helping to write chapters in Sandwich Island Publishings strategy guides for the Genesis and NES/SNES. My last project with them was writing Popful Mail The Official Strategy guide which was a great Sega CD game. I then wrote for various companies like Sendai/Ziff David (EGM's Guide to Sega Saturn, Bushido Blade 2 Official etc). I even worked out a deal with Panasonic to do a strategy guide for them under my own publishing company, it was never published as they folded on the 3DO, but I did finish it and got paid! A few years down the road it was clear that the big companies were taking over the strategy guide industry. In order for your guide to sell well you really needed communication with the company that made the game so you could get it finished before the game came out. A guide sold 60% of it sales on the release date of the game, and if you missed that release date it was death for the guide. Prima and Brady started singing exclusives with all the big companies so now the little companies like Sandwich Island could not do official guides or even get help when doing a non-official guide. I started working for Prima then got quickly got burned out. I was never impressed with the quality of their guides back then and I realized the guides were subpar because of the time crunch the authors had to write them which were usually no more than a week or two with really tight milestones. During this time they were still making changes to the game and you'd get new betas changing moves or whatnot and have to redo parts of the guide! I worked my butt off doing Thrill Kill's official guide for Prima then the game got canned by EA when they bought Virgin. While I still got paid it was deflating to put in that much work and not get to see it published. They switched me to Bushido Blade 2 for the PSX but I had only about a week, not only does that game not merit much of a strategy guide (its almost more like Rock/Paper/Scissors with some emphasis on reflexes) the time crunch turned turned into a glorified instruction manual/moves list, the worst guide I ever did - I even saw someone trash it with a review on amazon.com, I wish my name wasn't on it! I figured that I would need to get out of that part of the industry so I set a week to go to SoCal and interview for jobs. At this time the 3DO and new CD systems were confusing the game industry. What to do with all this extra space! Everyone thought they had to have actors and FMV in their games, or make games catered for the media (ie. Night Trap, etc) With the industry changing the movie companies saw the huge piece of the pie they could get out of the video game market. Movie companies like Universal Entertainment started with own game divisions, and other electronic companies like JVC jumped into the industry without really knowing what they were doing... I interviewed with several companies but ended up signing a letter of intent with JVC Interactive Entertainment as Assistant Producer for their N64 project and I was going to also work on an edutainment device (like the Sega Pico) they were working on. The CEO really liked me even though I really trashed their current project "Iron John" which was a horrible PC game (and never made it to market). They made me a nice deal and for a 20 year old no college, $39k a year starting sounded great even though it isn't a lot in CA. They were also going to pay for my move and first 3 months of living expenses. I still have a copy of the letter of intent to this day. Unfortunately when I returned home I had some problems in my family and decided to stay home and not make the move. It probably turned out for the best because all these new companies ended up closing their video game divisions, including JVC who as far as I know never published a game from that date on. I got a job with a Nasa contractor doing computer work and that is what I have been doing since (computer work, no longer at Nasa). Sometimes I wonder how things would have been different if I would have taken that job. I kinda wish I would have at this point, it was always a dream for me to work in the industry I grew up loving. I envy those that make a career out of it, but at the same time I would get so burned out testing and playing the games for the guides that it turned my hobby into a chore. I'm not sure if there would have been a balance to be found? So, after reading over what I have written I see that I mainly wrote this for myself as a trip down memory lane! I hope its not too boring for the other gamers here I'm still an avid gamer, just beat Halo with my brother Tuesday night/Wednesday Morning. We were two of those game geeks in line at midnight waiting to buy Oh, and since this is the Ask Alvey Thread, my original question to Robb which spawned this long post was to ask if you have worked with Brett Gow or Rob Lengang, the two gameplay counselors I knew as a kid? I know they went on to work with Activision as I met them at several CES and an E3 but have lost track of them since. -GG

A few interesting comments were posted on the sixflagshouston.com forum from a credible source. Here are the more interesting comments: The conclusion that can be made from this is it should be running like it did when we rode it in the rain on a normal day... I can't imagine would it would do in the rain at that point If you dig back into the earlier posts in this thread, during the testing phases, it was stated several times from various people that the train should be going at least 15 MPH over the first big hill. Right now it is going about 9MPH tops. This is the same hill that it stalled on in the initial tests. Apparently there are still issues causing it to not reach that speed which really tapers off the back end of the ride. While the poster did not state this, and it might not be the only issue, I think logic easily shows that this is at least one of the things that needs to be overcome. Like the poster said, I doubt anything will happen overnight, but it looks like some really nice things are to come! At the very least they are aware the Bullet is not running at its potential. -GG

Yes, same here! I asked Chad "I'm going bald, what was your excuse!" heheh -GG Chad of The Gravity Group (With hair) vs Balding Guru Guy...

Yeah, they especially liked the atmosphere when we rode at night. Chad and Michael are really nice and fun to hang out with. They are just like normal coaster enthusiasts. You can run off crazy ideas and they go into "Hrm, we could do that, the speed would have to be X here and X there, etc etc." It was really fun chatting with them and listening to their insights on the industry, etc. I would have never noticed them personally had Michael not been wearing a nice shirt with an embroidered Gravity Group logo on it. The only picture I saw of Chad was on the web page (which, rumor has it has been rebuilt and the new version is almost done) when he was bald! I had VERY briefly run into Corey when he was leaving before the Bullet was complete, got to shake hands with him and thats about it. -GG

Did you figure out who they are? -G.G. No. Am I suppose to? I was thinking that someone that reads these forums might know who they are. I've dropped some subtle clues, I'll give it another day to see if someone in this group can figure it out -GG

Did you figure out who they are? -G.G.

I'm always surprised about how many coaster enthusiasts I've met at Kemah lately, many are from out of town, and a lot are from this forum! I ran into a couple of coaster enthusiasts there yesterday and got a picture of them coming back from their first ever Bullet ride.... Everyone is always so friendly and these two were no exception! Thanks for another great day at the Boardwalk -GG Two Coaster Enthusiasts experiencing their first ride on the Bullet (Back Row)...

Awfully nice of the costume actor to comply, but with the proper editing of that video, it STILL makes for a potential lawsuit...especially if there are no witnesses to her asking Pluto beforehand. The parents of the kid had no problem, the lady that stopped Pluto was just some passerby thinking she was doing good not knowing the chase was staged. I don't see how a lawsuit would be possible from a third party that had nothing to do with the kid or his parents, unless you are talking about the kids parents deciding to do a lawsuit just for the heck of it, stating they never asked Pluto to comply? You can see the kid come back to Pluto when the lady is stopping him wondering why he still isn't being chased. If he was so terrified he wouldn't have come back towards Pluto but kept on running away. I doubt they'd have a case. -GG

They did a couple of POV runs, then they turned the camera around and pointed it at the riders for a few reaction runs as well. -GG

Hey A.M.F., do you read your private messages? Today was a nice day at the park. The film crew worked diligently as far as film crews are concerned and all the riders, even when the public was mixed in, performed great! The staff was, as always, top notch and Heather did a great job organizing the groups and coordinating the event. I had some friends with me and we all bought bands to ride the other rides while they reset camera shots. I still get giggle fits while riding the Boardwalk Bouncer. We all had a blast! Kemah Boardwalk still impresses me. It is a top notch park, spectacularly clean, and the employees are down to earth and friendly. -GG

The guy that played Pluto posted comments for that video stating that the parents of the kid asked him if they could get video of Pluto chasing him. It was the other lady that pulled Pluto aside that had the problem. Once she found out there was no problem things were fine apparently.

Did they move those exta cars to the garage?

As far as I know, there has never been a line that has stretched past the entrance. They have about twice as much queue ready to use if they ever needed it (maybe spring break). With two trains when the line stretches to the entrance queue it is about 45 minutes. Its the nature of the park. Kemah is a small park and during weekdays it is usually pretty empty. They can push about 500 people through the coaster an hour on the weekends so the line moves fast. If this was a full blown amusement park where everyone comes for the rides it may be different but Landry's target goal seems to be to get people to spend money in their restaurants then hit the rides on the way out. This especially seems to hold true for the coaster as the line backs up with single ticket riders when everyone gets through with their Friday/Sat night dinner. It has nothing to do with the ticket system. There are two places you can get tickets and while some people have posted that they waited 30 minutes for a ticket they could have gone to the other ticket booth where there are about 5 employees working the booth instead of the one by the coaster where there is usually just one employee and got through the line much faster. Personally I've never had to spend more than 5 minutes in line to buy my band. -GG