milst1

That's the one! Boy, that seems like a million years ago. I lived in DInkytown and St. Louis Park between 1988 and 1991.

We'll get together on a trip someday. Need any mop up credits in Hong Kong/Guangzhou?

Is it correct that Gerstlauer just manufactured the trains, and that RMC designed the track and modified structure? The article below gives Gerstlauer all of the credit. And I see a bunch of other errors, like calling it a wooden coaster. Sorry, I'm on Tapatalk. Is it the same article? This one is from Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Six Flags denies liability in fatal roller coaster accident BY SANDRA BAKER FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM FORT WORTH — Six Flags Over Texas denied liability in the July accident of a Dallas woman who fell to her death from the Texas Giant roller coaster, saying in a court filing that it complied with inspections and maintenance procedures recommended by the German company that designed and built the ride. Six Flags, in its response to a lawsuit filed last month by the woman’s relatives, said it “relied upon the expertise” of Gerstlauer Amusement Rides, which designed and manufactured the roller coaster train, its passenger restraint system and the track the ride operates on. Six Flags says it was unaware of any similar incidents occurring on any Gerstlauer roller coaster like the Texas Giant. “Six Flags believes it met all of the manufacturer’s maintenance and operational instructions, applicable to ASTM (American Society of Testing and Materials International) standards and all the requirements of Texas law as evidenced by the fact that the new Texas Giant roller coaster had received a certificate of inspection indicating same from an independent inspector just a few months before the incident involving Mrs. Esparza,” the filing said. Rosa Esparza, 52, was killed July 19 on her first visit to the Six Flags park in Arlington. Her family filed suit in September in Tarrant County naming the amusement park, Six Flags Entertainment Corp., Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc. and Texas Flags, Ltd. as defendants. The family is seeking more than $1 million in monetary relief. Emails sent to Gerstlauer Amusement Rides in Münsterhausen, Germany, seeking comment were not immediately returned. The company was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Frank Branson, the attorney representing the Esparza family, could not be reached for immediate comment Monday. The ride was immediately shut down following the accident, and was reopened last month after Six Flags said its investigation found that no mechanical failure was involved in the accident. Six Flags, though, added re-designed restraint-bar pads from the manufacturer and new seat belts. The park also began providing a coaster seat at the ride entrance so guests can test their fit before entering the line, saying guests with “unique body shapes and sizes” may not fit into the ride’s restraint system. The family’s suit says Esparza, who also went by the last name Ayala-Gaona, was upside down in her seat and holding on for “dear life” before she was thrown to her death. Esparza was in the front left seat of the train’s second car behind her daughter and son-in-law. The car had no seat belt or shoulder harness, only a single lap or “T-bar” to restrain passengers. Six Flags said in its filing that 2.5 million people had ridden the new Texas Giant before the accident. The Texas Giant opened at Six Flags Over Texas in 1990, but the ride was closed at the end of the 2009 season for a $10 million renovation to make it faster, smoother and more thrilling. The ride reopened in April 2011. The Texas Giant rises 14 stories high and has a 79-degree first drop, the steepest in the world for a wooden roller coaster. The family’s suit alleges there were problems with the ride’s security system, saying the green-light system was experiencing inconsistencies and intermittent failures that shouldn’t have allowed the train to be dispatched unless each safety bar restraint was in the proper position. The suit alleges that inspections later found there were inconsistencies in the relative locking positions of the safety bars on the train’s cars, as well as failures found in the green light system. In its response, Six Flags said the green-light system was also designed by Gerstlauer. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/07/3676240/six-flags-denies-liability-in.html#storylink=cpy

I really love Efteling and Phantasialand.

Nice report!

I think we'll be going to HK before this gets built, so another park goes on "the list of having to go back there". I love my Iron Man (my fave superhero since forever) and I'm psyched about any ride so-themed. Good for the park and for the theme park enthusiast, whatever it is. Speaking of Disney simulators, I can't remember if StormRider at DisneySea has an entire moving theater, or if just the individual seats move. Any chance that Iron Man could be a StormRider type of simulator rather than a Star Tours type? Isn't $100+ million a crazy price tag for a new skin on an existing proven ride system? Or maybe all of the new content and theming alone justifies the pricetag. Should be pretty cool in any case. Hope everyone is doing well.

Looks like so much fun!

Right? It's not just like one loop is weird and the other is normal. Both loops are bizarre!

85, many thanks to TPR.

We were there a few years ago. It was pretty deserted. Loved the strange old woodie. What a shame.

Means a lot to me, coming from you, Robb! I did not use the Multi-uploader. I'm still picking my photos out and uploading them one at a time, but I do plan to try it out on a report in the near future, and I'll let you know!

We were unable to do the TPR Midwest Trip this year (which would have been our third TPR trip in 2013!), but I've been talking about a "Deep in the Heart of Texas" trip for a couple of years, and we finally got to do it. Texas in August, you say? Actually, it wasn't too bad this year, and we tacked Oklahoma on to the beginning and Louisiana to the end. Hope you enjoy. Our trip began with an evening flight to Oklahoma City. First thing in the morning, we visited the most excellent Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. You should definitely make time for this if you are ever in this area. It's quite moving. Oklahoma City is also home to Frontier City! First credit was Wild Kitty! First, a big shout out to TPR's very own TheSchwitek for giving us a nice little tour of the credits. We could see that he's giving the park a lot of TLC. And he was a great host. Wild Kitty! I really like that name. Other credits we hit included Wildcat, the very fun woodie... ...Steel Lasso, the Vekoma Suspended Family... ...and Silver Bullet, the Scharzkopf Looping Star. We actually skipped Diamond Back, the Arrow Shuttle Loop that used to be half of Lightnin' Loops at our home park, Six Flags Great Adventure. It was a very quiet day at the park. In fact it was the last day of daily operations. Animals come out when there are no people, like this beaver. And this turtle. Here is the new water play structure. They are building out the waterpark section nicely. TheSchwitek gave us a backstage tour of his office. He has a lot of souvenir drink cups! We enjoyed our visit to this pleasant park. Then we drove 4 hours to Texas. Four hours later, we reached Wonderland in Amarillo! The park opened at 7pm, and we happened on a special: Free soda with admission! First credit was Mouse Trap, a 1975 Pinfari Zyklon. Here's another look. I asked the operator a question and the people in front of us turned around and said "You're not from around here, are you!" Don't confuse Mouse Trap, the Pinfari Zyklon, with Cyclone, the Miler Wild Mouse. Besides Wild Chipmunk at Lakeside, this Miler Wild Mouse is the only other one still operating. Tree Top Racers at Adventure City is SBNO, and Mighty Mouse at Funtown Pier was a victim of Hurricane Sandy. Texas Tornado was quite bizarre. Weirdest loops we've ever seen. It's a Hopkins. Hornet is a Vekoma that came to Wonderland via Boblo Island and Astroworld. Fantastic Journey was a fun dark ride. See what I mean? You've been warned. What else? Pirate ship, a Sizzler, carousel, lots of kiddie flats, Skee Ball, sky ride... Ferris wheel, rainbow, oh, and that killer looking storm coming in! Amarillo is definitely inside Tornado Alley. That just did not look good. But first we stopped for lunch at this Mongolian Barbecue place. Meh. Not as good as the one I used to go to in Minneapolis. I'm sure there are better ones out there. I did get this beautiful shot as we ran for our lives. We found shelter at a theater and saw Elysium. The next day we had some time to kill and visited this very cool RV museum in Amarillo. Yup, that's Jeff Daniels' RV from the movie RV. Mr. Sisemore was really nice. He started with a gas station and now he's one of the biggest manufacturers and retailers of RVs in the world. We then picked Lauren up at the airport (she was supposed to fly into OKC but was re-routed after multiple flight cancellations) and headed to the Cadillac Ranch, which I've always wanted to see. It was a bit of a let-down, due to a lake left by the previous night's storms, and all of the empty spray cans that people leave all over the place. But still fun. We then had a decent lunch at a place called Dyer's Bar-B-Que and they had a sink like this. Then we checked out Route 66 in Amarillo. There are a lot of antique places there. There was also a very cool haunted house place called 6th Street Massacre that's only open around Halloween, so check it out if you're there this month. Then it was on to Lubbock, Texas, and Joyland, "Where the Fun Is!" Of course there's still something very cool about 10 Cadillacs buried in a row with their tail fins sticking up. I would have loved to have seen it when it was new. Joyland was fun. I did my first rock-o-plane. Cheryl is always amazed any time I do a new flat. Dipsy Doodle was this Miler kiddie oval. They had a nice old carousel. They had this Allan Herschell Mad Mouse, which is exactly the style preferred by the Chinese ripoffs. They had a Sizzler, Tilt-a-Whirl, and this Spider. They also had this Trabant. A Musik Express and a Skyride. Joyland Garbage Can for the collection! Cool merch. Good times. Onto another plane! Texas is just too big. To the Six Flags Mother Ship. Since we had these from the TPR Mexico Trip... Cheryl was able to get the Pandemonium credit. I had the credit from its Tony Hawk days. Cheryl still doesn't have Shock Wave, but it was down. And none of us were going to get this credit on this trip. Wonder Woman Photo-Op And the new Texas Sky Screamer was fun. Then an incredibly long drive across Eastern Texas. If you drive across Texas, you will see Buc-ee's. We made it to our next destination. Fortunately we managed a ride on Iron Shark before it started to rain and things started shutting down. It's a cute little park. I surprised Cheryl by going on another flat ride. When on Galveston Island, our advice is to skip the long waits at Bubba Gump's and Fish Tales. Landry's gets enough of your money when you go on the pier. Go down the beach to Gaido's. Really good. Then another ridiculously long drive to San Antonio's very own Six Flags! Look who's meeting us here! It's Jolie! We have so many good TPR friends all over!!! And look what we're riding today! Just reopened with the seat belts. They're happy! This is a super fun ride! I thought it would be more intense, but it's incredibly fun. Then a quick run over to SeaWorld! So I can get my Steel Eel fix! And my Azul fix. I always send the silks photos to Elissa! We close down SeaWorld, and we bid adieu to Jolie, and we drive Lauren back to Austin. Cheryl and I have one more stop before heading home. Welcome to Baton Rouge, Louisiana! You park here, give your tickets at the gate and walk the bridge to park. They were very concerned about undergarments. Bridge over the highway. The park was completely deserted, and we found out that the dry rides didn't get going until 2pm, so we left for lunch and came back. The park has 4 credits: Loco Loco, a Miler Family; Gilbeau's Galaxi, an SDC Galaxi; Ragin' Cajun, a Vekoma Boomerang; and Xtreme, a Maurer Sohne Xtended SC2000. A young woman was killed on this in 2010, you may recall. The family and the park happened to reach a settlement while we were in Baton Rouge. Now they only fill 2 seats per car and the ops have to be 18+. It really kills the already-limited capacity. UPDATE: I don't know if this is news, but according to an ad in the October issue of Amusement Today, Dixie Landin' has put this up for sale. Asking price is $2 million. Ironically, the ad photo shows four riders in a car, having lots of fun. There are a few flats and such. We rode the train. We were turned away from the antique cars because we didn't have a kid! Twas the end of the season, and the gift shops were bare. Every time Cheryl tried to take her pants off, I was able to point to one of these conveniently available signs. A couple of tiny culture credits before the end of our trip: We visited the Louisiana State Capitol, the tallest state capitol building in the USA. It was built by then-Governor Huey Long, who did a lot to bring Louisiana into the modern era (e.g electrification, roads, bridges, education). He was a great populist, but became corrupted by his unmatched power. The rich hated his plan to cap wealth. He could have gone on to challenge FDR for the presidency. But he was assassinated inside the lobby of his own statehouse. One of the bullets missed him and left this hole in the marble. He was shot by the son-in-law of a judge he had fired. Both legislative chambers and the governor's office are in this building. There are great views from the observation deck. The building was named a National Historic Landmark in 1983. That's it for this trip report...Thanks for joining us!!!

I really like Steel Eel at SeaWorld in San Antonio. The Morgan Hypers don't get much love. As far wood coasters go, I think Thundercoaster at Tusenfryd is a lot of fun, but few know about it.

Looks like we're headed back to Knoebel's for another visit this month!

If I didn't feel like crap have a ton of work to do, I'd be at PPP right now.

Using it now; it's pretty cool!

^^^ Shamu is Sea World; Shouka is the lone killer whale at SFDK. Great great report, with great photos. We're very due for another Cali trip. Wish we could make it for WCB. In the meantime, great stuff.

Once again, I missed that I made the front page and the gazillion hits! Thanks Mods, Robb, and everyone!

I haven't used the multi-image uploader function yet, but I did come across an error when I did a report yesterday, where the use of the apostrophe ' or quotes " characters in the captions resulted in slash characters being added //////// and they multiplied with every refresh (e.g., preview, save, etc.). I also want to praise the addition of the feature that enables re-ordering of photos.

We had a really fun weekend recently, shooting through NJ and PA to score credits! It was fun to actually drive in our own car and not deal with airports and rentals for a change. BTW, apostrophes were causing a problem in the captions (They all came out like this \\\\\\\\\\\ for some reason), so they have been removed. Sorry if it reads a little weird. But I did notice the new features in the posting tools, which are really useful. Anyway, on with the report! As you can see, I did a lot of prep to score those marginal online discounts. But props to Robb and Elissa...we had a huge number of Knoebels tickets left over from Road to Cedar Point two years ago! The first stop was the Funplex in my home state of New Joisey. Mount Laurel was about a 2 hour drive from our place in Queens. The Funplex is all about fun, and the Funcoaster will set you back only $6. The Funplex appears to be a typical FEC, but as you can see, they won the Brass Ring Award from IAAPA in 2011 for best FEC in North America. Funspot Orlando/Kissimmee took the award for 2012. Well find out in November about 2013. Cool water play structure. The Funcoaster is an SBF Visa spinning mad mouse. In addition to bowling there is an arcade, frog hopper and assorted kiddie flats, mini golf, and other FEC kinds of attractions, indoor and outdoor. Onward! Sesame Place was the next stop on our journey. Oops, the Single Day ticket that is sold online is only good on weekdays. Note that they don't call it a weekday ticket. That is in the fine print. We were supposed to have gotten the Elmo Ticket, which is full price, good on the weekends, and includes a second day at the park, so we had to upgrade our ticket to the regular gate price: $60.99! Its only a few dollars less than Six Flags Great Adventure! You get one coaster for almost the price of 12! So first we scored the one credit, Vapor Trail, a Vekoma Junior. It is one expensive credit, 10 times the coast of Funcoaster! We needed to get back on the road but I wanted to take some photos, so we started walking down the midway and saw this...nothing. Most of the attractions are tucked to the sides and geared to very small children. What surprised me was the relatively minimal theming. I guess its better to have less stimulation than more in these situations. This place must be raking it in on busy days like this one. Theres Ernie at the Teeny Tiny Tidal Wave. We did enjoy the park soundtrack. Onward! In all of our travels, we had never made it to Lancaster, PA and Dutch Wonderland until today. The first thing we saw was this guy getting escorted out of the park by Security. Some other guy who was watching looked at me, shook his head, and said, Who gets kicked out of Dutch Wonderland? We understood his puzzlement. It was a clean and friendly park. Kingdom Coaster was the fun CCI family woodie. Joust is the Chance Big Dipper. Theming on par with Cedar Fair. Family fun with wizards! Not as good as it looked. My iced coffee was pretty good, though. More parks should have pony rides! Onward. Normally its a short drive of 35 minutes or so from Lancaster to Hershey, but we got caught in the traffic for the Jason Aldean concert at Hershey Stadium. That was an extra hour going nowhere. When we finally got to Hersheypark, we met up with Kevin, whom I know through IAAPA. As you can see, Im rockin my Japan Tour t-shirt. This is the credit we were after. Even though the park was packed, there is a very nice quiet path to Skyrush if you go to the right after entering the park. If any coaster ever deserved the adjective aggressive, this is the one. I loved Skyrush, but it was a difficult ride for me. Instead of the restraint holding me in at the hips, these restraints held me more on the thighs, which meant that all of the forces would go directly to my femurs. Consequently I had to really hold on tight with my hands to hold myself in my seat and prevent the full force of the negative Gs from going directly my legs. Others on the TPR forum have said that it gets better as you learn the layout. I hope I get that opportunity, because this is one badass ride. It was one of the most ferocious coasters Ive ever ridden. We hit a few other coasters like Wildcat and Lightning Racer and had a decent meal. We then skedaddled to avoid the post-concert traffic. Four parks is not a bad day. Sunday was reserved just for Knoebels and the drive home. There is Kozmo on the carousel. Heres a ring collection box for the carousel. Warning! The sight of Phoenix may cause coaster enthusiasts to climax prematurely. This coaster is consistently excellent. These flood markers are incredible. Here was our credit, Black Diamond, which I really enjoyed. I love coasters that are dark rides and dark rides that are coasters. Knoebels tradition of above-average food continues. My sandwich was freaking dee-licious! We saw a lot of testing activity happening on Flying Turns so we wandered over. We spoke with one of the guys working on it for a bit. He was cautiously optimistic that the ride would open before the end of the season. Sure enough, that water dummy testing video came out shortly thereafter. Im looking forward to it, just because it looks pretty neat and the whole thing is technically impressive. And bobsled coasters are neat. And its a woodie! As Robb says, hopefully it will be successful for the park. Well, summer's almost over. I hope everyone had a great coaster season. Thanks for joining us on our trip!

I finally got to ride Skyrush on Saturday. I've been on a lot of rides, and that is one of the most intense, if not the most intense, coasters I've ever been on. I really loved the aggressiveness. Unfortunately for me, the ejector airtime is so severe, all of the forces go straight to my femurs, and the pain was pretty brutal. I admit that my pain threshold is low. So I found that I had to hold on for dear life, mainly to shift the forces to my arms, holding my body into the seat in order to save myself the femur pain. I know it probably has to do with body type. For me, if Skyrush had a restraint that mainly held the hips, I'd be more comfortable. As designed, if it went a bit slower, I'd probably be happier. In any case, it's a brilliant ride. Sorry for not having read the earlier 500 pages of this threat.

Anyone see this story about a gondola falling off a Ferris Wheel in Argentina? Sorry, I don't have the means to translate right now.

Thanks for the love, everyone! I'm personally not a huge fan of Hurricanes, but whoever loves them should go take a spin! It's definitely a park that's worth a visit. I know that I'm going to try to take more advantage of a great park that's right across the street!

We didn't ride that...we had waited so long to get the coaster credit, we didn't use some of our tickets and opted to get out of Dodge asap! I'm sorry we missed it 'cause there won't be a second time!

Thanks to everyone for checking this out!