singemfrc

It was never a sport, it's theatre basically; but regardless, it's going to sell out Levis Stadium on 3/29 and that will be the first time CGA and Levis are both running full tilt.

I think they should since they're the only major California park that isn't year round now. I'm sure Prudential would just love that though. I'm shocked that the park is not only open but open until 7pm on Sunday 3/29. Heads up if you're going on that day opening weekend, WWE Wrestlemania will be going on next door at Levis Stadium (starts at 3 but people will probably start getting there at 1), so expect parking and traffic to be an absolutely nightmare unless you're only going for the first few hours. The park will probably be a bit busier the day before too since people travelling to Santa Clara for the whole WWE thing (There are other related events in San Jose on Saturday) may come to the park while they're there. If you aren't a WWE fan it's like their Super Bowl, it always draws huge crowds, the stadium will probably sell out. I'm not a huge WWE fan, I haven't watched their shows in years but I'm going to Wrestlemania out of nostalgia since I used to watch it when I was younger, it's rare that it's near us...anyway I was originally planning on going to CGA on the 28th, but now I'm wondering if it would be possible to just go to CGA at opening and then walk over to Levis Stadium for WM afterwards..I wonder how they will handle parking for two events at once since they haven't done that before. I also noticed the park is currently scheduled open for all Sundays next fall. I wonder if the 49ers are going to pay them to close again, I don't think their schedule is set yet.

There would be something kind of cool about the remake of the movie using the remake of the coaster, but you're right there is absolutely no way this movie is going to be good. You can't remake a classic like this..even if the remake is good in and of itself (and it probably wont be), you'd still hate it for the comparison to the original. In fairness though I don't think the writers are completely to blame, it's the studios. They're too afraid to take a gamble on millions of dollars with a fresh idea that may win or lose when in their view a remake or reboot has a built in audience and even if the movie sucks (it will) they're still virtually guaranteed to make their money back just out of former fans' curiosity or blind allegiance. Case in point, I know this is going to be bad, but I'm still going to see it, and they know I'm not the only one.

Thats a pretty crappy thing to do, grab someone else's photo and post without credit...I wouldn't think anyone here would do that...especially such easy-to-produce photos.

I assume he took those, why, do you see one that looks like it was taken in a restricted area? Looks to me like they were all taken through the fence in the parking lot.

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I'm sure it's not, but there isn't usually a camera crew following construction.

Tatsu was supposed to open much earlier though, it had several setbacks. I want to say the opening was delayed 2 or 3 times. Went back and looked it up, it was originally supposed to open on April 8 until B&M had a problem with track fabrication delaying shipments of track by 4 weeks, then there was an engineering mistake where they had the bottom piece of track in the pretzel loop running right through a concrete foundation. Following the long days that mistake caused, a few of the steel workers quit. Construction was delayed again due to weather and it ended up opening on May 13. Lold when Tim Burkart he hoped for normal operations to dispatch a train every 40-45 seconds. I found an interesting Revolution trivia tidbit as well..according to one of the workers on Tatsu who was also there for the Revolution install he said Revolution stalled at the top of the loop in it's first test run and it took the park a week of towing to get the train back to the station.

Yeah unfortunately it aired years ago and the channel it aired on (I forget which) never sold a dvd, reran it, or put it up for streaming anywhere, so it's very hard to find.

It's still the best flyer in the world But yeah, best ride goes to a few others, including (for me) X2. I love me some Tatsu, but no it isnt, not even close. It's the best in the US, but Starry Sky Scraper/Scrapper/Ripper in China is 100x better than Tatsu; it's one of the best layouts of any coaster anywhere. If you havent seen this, listen to the reaction when it hits the brake run, keeping in mind these are seasoned TPR riders.

Tatsu doc is still up in French, but not in English. I'm still trying to upload it but it keeps getting stuck at 0% processing, even after I re-encoded it to a much more friendly MPEG-2 format. Robb/Elissa, since you upload a lot to youtube, do you ever have that happen? Any idea why/how to fix it?

"No one will ever do a better ride than this." -Tim Burkhart, about Tatsu. LOL. I'm trying to upload the Megabuilders episode about Tatsu to youtube but it gets stuck at 0% processing. Must be due to an old codec or something.

I do remember hearing about that documentary. I also remember watching the Kingda Ka documentary a few years ago and the Expedition Everest one. Tatsu was supposed to open much earlier though, it had several setbacks. I want to say the opening was delayed 2 or 3 times. Remember Tatsu's entire construction was televised in a documentary? I still have a copy of that. It was a great documentary, someone uploaded it to youtube a while back but I guess it was taken down. I still have the Tatsu one saved to my hard drive. It took me forever to find it, the show is pretty obscure. Where was the Kingda Ka and Expedition Everest one? I never saw either of those but would love to.

Tatsu was supposed to open much earlier though, it had several setbacks. I want to say the opening was delayed 2 or 3 times. Remember Tatsu's entire construction was televised in a documentary? I still have a copy of that.

I wouldn't bet against that. I think we'll be riding TC with construction still going on around us..remember how unfinished the area around YOLO was when it started operating.

I would definitely avoid Gold Rusher, thats the only one I can think of that can be difficult to squeeze into especially for anyone over 6 foot.

I think the answer to your question (SFMM compared to KBF) is the difference in the crowd each park attracts. KBF attracts more families than SFMM and probably has less issues with fights and weapons. SFMM, attracts more teenagers and people more likely to bring weapons into a park, so it became more of a necessity for them, and as VCXFreak points out it used to be a lot worse than it is now.

Since you mention you're not huge gamblers (neither am I) if you enjoy(ed) retro arcade games or pinball, check out the Pinball Hall Of Fame, which is only a couple minutes from the strip by car or cab. Instead of feeding dollars into slot machines you can feed quarters (most are only .25, the newer ones can be .50-1.00) into old arcade and pinball machines. They have HUNDREDS of pinball and retro arcade machines from brand new back to I think the oldest pinball machine is from like 1945. All machines take real quarters, and change machines give quarters, just like the good old days, no tokens or cards to recharge. Also if you go to the Luxor are highly recommend the Titanic exhibit. This is not a tourist trap, the amount of artifacts and information they have on display is stunning. When I went tix4tonight offered discount tickets for it. For roller coasters DO the adventuredome and DONT do Manhattan Express, if you want her to love the place that is

The information that I've given is from such a sit down. I don't think it was with Bonnie, but this person, who runs a competing theme park website, went and sat down with park management and asked them about it..what I have said is what they were willing to say. There can be many reasons the park doesn't want to share information about ongoing projects or lack thereof. Just because they aren't sharing doesn't mean they don't know more. I have no doubt that they know exactly what it would take to reopen the tower and why they haven't done it, but it's their prerogative to not share that with us.

Every once in a while someone asks and I try and help someone by telling them this I always get "Just dont ride!" "You shouldnt have to do that!" I know, I realize that it sucks that you need to do anything to make the ride not hurt you, and I realize that if you don't ride it you can't get hurt by it. I understand that, and if you don't want to ride it, awesome. That is your choice, and thank you for making the line that much shorter. Me, I want to ride anything that I can ride without pain. Regardless of whether I should have to, I don't think that turning my head one way or another is a particularly difficult task, and if that's all I have to do to essentially add another coaster to my list of rideable coasters in this park, I would much rather do that than skip it and only have 4 coasters to ride instead of 5. (Boomerang is not on that list, though I ride it occasionally and always wonder why I did) I'd prefer that they replace it with something better and less painful, but that's not something I can control. There are rides where you can't do anything to stop how much it hurts you, such as Boomerang, Ghost Rider, Revolution, X2, Desperado, Manhattan Express, or Hades 360. Those rides will kick your ass no matter what you do and the only option is to not ride. At least with Kong I can simply turn my head either way and turn a painful ride into a painless one.

That's exactly what I was wondering. It was originally built by Intamin and I'm told that Intamin "can't" fix it (that could mean they decline to, or MM wont pay for it, etc) and I immediately thought of OTIS. I know they didn't build it, but there's no more expert on elevators of any kind in the world than they, and surely they would be able to figure out a way to fix it if MM wanted to pay for it, and I suspect that they don't. This got brought up several pages back and at that time I was also discussing the polar coaster idea. Obviously thats a hell of a lot more expensive, but also a lot more marketable. It's possible they're already considering it, and it does kind of fit their M.O. if you think about it. The left side of Colossus sat absolutely neglected for at least 2 years before it closed and we all speculated about an RMC makeover. It probably just wasnt used for a while and at some point they started talking in earnest about the RMC makeover and decided it to just leave the left side be. If MM was considering a Polar Coaster or a new tower of any kind, it would make sense that they would close it now and not want to spend the money to overhaul it. I don't think they would ever get rid of the tower altogether without replacing it. Of course they might just be cheap, too

It's been several months at least. The elevators are in a state of disrepair (and reportedly not up to code) and the park has been so far unable to find anyone either willing or qualified to fix them due to their unique nature. As far as I know there has been no decision made to close it permanently, but there's also no estimate for if or when they might reopen. Basically SBNO.

That might not actually last too much longer surprisingly. Newhall Land and Farm has just recently erected a brand new perimeter fence behind the park (Riddler's and Batman side) and they are supposedly going ahead with building a new development back there. Whether or not they actually go through with those plans and start building remains to be seen. There seems to be a threat of homes built behind Magic Mountain every few years but this looks to be the most serious it's been in a while. Hopefully there's a solid agreement in place protecting SFMM. CGA was in their location before Prudential, which is the part that pisses me off because the amusement park was already there, Prudential moved in next to it and then complained about it being there. I'd hate to see the same kind of fighting start here too.

Thats one advantage of SFMM's location..no real neighbors to speak of, no one to complain. Lots of California parks have issues either with neighbors or height restrictions, SFMM doesn't have either.

I would blame Ghost Rider's condition on the manufacturing more than the maintenance. I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe KBF is lacking in maintenance of that coaster. I don't think Gold Striker will deteriorate either. CGA has a history of maintaining excellent conditions on their coasters, Top Gun/Flight Deck being a prime example. The only one that's rough is Vortex and I don't think there's anything they can do or could have done about that. The climate in Santa Clara is also alot more woodie-friendly than southern california. I think Gold Striker's biggest threat is really from Prudential. (The company responsible for the noise complaints necessitating all the tunnels and walls..rumor is more to come for next season) So far they haven't really taken away from the ride experience, but enough is enough already. I'll be interested to see what happens to the Colossus structure from here on out.