milst1

Chris, Rick, Larry, great to hear from all of you. It's getting harder and harder to do this as we run out of "low hanging" fruit. Then again, I didn't think we could match, let alone top, last year's park count. Thanks so much for checking out the report.

Thanks very much for checking out our report. It was a fun year, and we still have one park in Guatemala to do this year. Just fyi, our first international theme park trip was the 2008 TPR Seoul-Tokyo trip, which was amazing.

2011 Edition. We're still going to hit one more park in 2011, Xetulul in Guatemala, but not until next Friday and I thought it better to post sooner. I'll add the Xetulul photo later. Thanks to Cheryl for providing photos from our mini-Scandi trip. My laptop zapped my memory card (has this ever happened to others?) and my photos were lost. Cheryl was very good at taking pictures of the signs for every credit. Plopsa Indoor Coevorden Legoland California SeaWorld San Diego Belmont Park Efteling Parc Asterix Jardin d'Acclimatation Walt Disney Studios-PDR Disneyland Parc-PDR (full princess dining experience for our 5th Wedding Anniversary) Parc du Bocasse Parc Saint-Paul FarGlory Ocean Park Window on China Leofoo Village Theme Park Atayal Resort Discovery World Janfusun Fancyworld Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village E-DA Theme Park Walibi Holland Speelpark Oud Valkeveen Sybrandy's Bellewaerde Park Boudewijn Seapark Familiepretpark Mini Mundi Shan GriLa Paradise (whoops, this was back during the Taiwan trip) Linnanmäki Särkänniemi Amusement Park Gröna Lund TusenFryd Scream Zone Adventurers Family Entertainment Center Lake Winnepesaukah Six Flags Over Georgia Kings Dominion Quassy Canada's Wonderland Bowcraft Victorian Gardens Wild Waves Six Flags Great Adventure (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Morey's Piers (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Clementon Park (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Knoebel's (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Hersheypark (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Dorney Park (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Kennywood (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Kings Island (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Jungle Jack's Landing (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Cedar Point (TPR's Road to Cedar Point) Parque de Atracciones de Zaragoza Terra Mitica Festilandia John's Incredible Pizza Company (Riverside, CA) Castle Amusement Park Scandia Amusement Park Adventure City Pacific Park Six Flags Magic Mountain Disneyland Disney California Adventure Universal Studios Hollywood (Hollywood Horror Nights) John's Incredible Pizza (Roseville, CA) Funtown at Micke Grove Oakland Zoo Happy Hollow Park & Zoo EPCOT Magic Kingdom Busch Gardens Tampa Kinderstad Heerlen Phantasialand Mondo Verde (Thanks for checking it out! Happy New Year!) Xetulul

This is probably worth a follow-up from when I last posted in May: Plopsaland Indoor Coevorden Legoland California SeaWorld San Diego Belmont Park Efteling Parc Astérix Jardin d'Acclimatation Disneyland Resort Paris - Walt Disney Studios Park Disneyland Resort Paris - Disneyland Park Parc du Bocasse Parc Saint Paul Farglory Ocean Park Window on China Theme Park Shan GriLa Paradise Leofoo Village Theme Park Atayal Resort Discovery World/Yamay Janfusun Fancyworld Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village E-DA Theme Park Scream Zone Walibi Holland/Walibi World Speelpark Oud Valkeveen Sybrandy's Speelpark Bellewaerde Park Boudewijn Seapark Familiepretpark Mini Mundi Linnanmäki Särkänniemi Amusement Park Gröna Lund TusenFryd Scream Zone Adventurers Family Entertainment Center Lake Winnepesaukah Six Flags Over Georgia Kings Dominion Quassy Canada's Wonderland Bowcraft Amusement Park Victorian Gardens Wild Waves Theme Park Great Adventure Morey's Piers Clementon Park Knoebel's Hersheypark Dorney Park Kennywood Kings Island Jungle Jack's Landing Cedar Point Parque de Atracciones de Zaragoza Terra Mitica Festilandia John's Incredible Pizza Company (Riverside) Castle Amusement Park Scandia Amusement Park Adventure City Pacific Park Six Flags Magic Mountain Disneyland Disney California Adventure John's Incredible Pizza Company (Roseville) Fun Town at Micke Grove Oakland Zoo Happy Hollow Park and Zoo Walt Disney World - EPCOT Walt Disney World - Magic Kingdom Busch Gardens Tampa Bay Kinderstad Heerlen Phantasialand Mondo Verde I think that's 71 parks. I've gotta fix my Club TPR banner.

Once again, thanks to everyone for the comments. I've learned from Jakob Wahl at IAAPA Europe that Maus au Chocolat was done by the Dutch company ETF and the Belgian company Alterface.

Awesome, awesome.

Thanks for checking out the report and thanks for the comments everyone! Chuck, no, we missed Hollywood Tour on this trip, and I can't remember if we hit it in '09. I'm blanking. I did enjoy Ghost Rickshaw. Silbermine...I don't know. I guess it just seems old and crappy next to the cool stuff they've built in the last 10 years. If that were my home park growing up I'd probably be swearing by it. Yes, Horn & Hardart was the old automat in NYC. My dad took me when I was a kid but I only remember a display, not working windows. But they're in practically every decent-sized train station in the Netherlands. Regarding winter park visits, hey, wintertime is the best time for airfares to Europe. They just about double in the summer. I didn't know about the refurb for Mexico. I like that the owners of this park are finding it worthwhile to keep throwing money into it. It's already a full-day park and it's great that they've set their own bar so high. I know TPR has visited the hotels but the rates were just too high for us...to me that's more evidence that high quality parks can do better with their own hotels than letting hotel chains feed at the edges of the parking lot. Aquatrax! EMWA, Maus au Chocolat was built with you in mind!

Good stuff, thanks!

Impressive stuff! Great report!

Thanks for the update.

I've got a MasterCard PayPass, which is just a tiny card/sticker with a chip inside that's stuck to the back of my celphone. You can wave the phone over a reader to pay at sales points that have a reader, just like you can do with a credit card that has a chip inside. I guess this is revolutionary if you can pay for a queue product at each ride by waving your PayPass. If they're just updating the Q-Bot purchase hut sales points to allow payment with chipcard, I don't see this as a big change. The big change is the transition to using your celphone as the Q-Bot and just buying/downloading Q-Bot software for your visit. Has anyone had an experience with this? We saw it advertised at Flamingoland but the park was too dead to look into it. Cheers.

This is really great Larry! I am also enamored of dark rides and always try to hit them at every park. I love the Scary Dark Rides book and all of that old carny footage. DAFE member too. This project sounds awesomely awesome. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I couldn't even wait to finish reading the thread to say thank you. And now that I've read through the whole thread, I say it again, this is really f-ing cool. And I love the dark ride history lesson too. ps don't I get the photo credit for the Keansburg picture?

Saturday morning, Cheryl, Lauren, and I drove down to Limburg, the southernmost province in the Netherlands to do some credit whoring and to make a return trip to a park we hadn't been to in a few years, Phantasialand in Bruhl, Germany. After some additional whoring, we also hit the touristy town of Valkenburg for their Christmas spread. One can't be too choosy regarding coasters in December in Northern Europe, but we were pleasantly surprised. First stop, Kinderstad Heerlen, in...well, Heerlen. It's deceptively small-looking from the parking lot. This is the scene when you walk in. It doesn't look like much, but the space goes back for another mile. Kiddy flat. Of course we're there close to opening, so not a lot of people around. Bizarrely we run into a bunch of Canadian expats preparing a Christmas party for 100 Canadian expat kids. Ask me sometime about the secret evil relationship between Canada and the Netherlands. These big trampolines are fun. Double-decker carousel. This place went on forever. F&B seating area and play structure. Wee bumper cars. Water bikes. See how big it is? Climbing thing. I can never get to the top of these things. It just goes on forever. Little log flume. *Another* bumper cars. Less wee. Finally, the credit, a 2011 Pinfari Wacky Worm. And finally, the back wall. The best attraction park in Europe. Who knew? Watch out Europa Park and Paris Disney! And PortAventura, Efteling, and many others. Watch out. The Dutch love a good automat. Credit obtained. On to Phantasialand, about an hour away. Winter Phantasialand has little snowmobiles for kids! I'm ready for some hot sisters-on-theming action. Oooh, Maus au Chocolat merchandise! I am very psyched to ride Maus au Chocolat. But first Lauren needs the credits. Big ugly construction area. I believe that they were tearing out the log flumes. Anyone know what's going in here? Silbermine is an incredibly boring and slow dark ride, with many scenes like this. It's like a Mexican Pirates. But you're not in a boat. You're in a silbermine. Nice, green eye shadow. More flume destruction, it seems. Hooray for parks that expose guests to open flame! Each section of Phantasialand has its own dragon. Seriously. The amazingly themed top-spin, Talocan. Yes, Black Mamba. And they've added digital wait times. I don't remember those from January '09. I didn't really take any pictures of Black Mamba as most of it's hidden. Check out mrtickles report from June for some great pics. Yay, Maus au Chocolat! The new ride! Long queue with extensive confectionary theming. I knew it was a shooting dark ride, but when I saw this, my jaw dropped open...same ride system as Toy Story Mania???!!!??? Plus,, see the hidden Mickey, um, mouse, hanging out on top of the car! Apparently mice have overtaken this confectionary, and you must shoot them down with chocolate icing! Love the little touches on the ride vehicles. And it's a great fun ride. Try to the hit the 5,000 point mice. On to Wuze Town and some awesome coasters... Winja's Fear and Force are the surprising spinning coasters with a surprise! Apologies for lack of pics. mrtickles has some good ones. Great theming in Wuze Town. Temple of the Night Hawk is a long (4:00) boring Vekoma in the dark. All of the effects I remember from 2009 were turned off. But there is a Temple of the Night Hawk Fan Site. The Fantasy section of the park where Wuze Town is has great theming, sort of a cross between Steampunk and Roger Dean. The splash battle Wakobato was of course closed for Winter. At dusk, the winter displays came on. Oooh, aahh. Colorado Adventure was actually pretty thrilling in the dark. More extreme than I remembered. This dragon breathed fire every few minutes. I screwed up the photo, but Ghost Rickshaw was an amusing dark ride in this section, China Town. Loved the digital tip board. Last ride at Phantasialand was the great indoor Intamin drop tower, Mystery Tower, which was a walk-on. Then we drove to Venlo in NL, gambled at Holland Casino, and crashed at our hotel. The next morning found us whoring this credit at Mondo Verde, a strange nature park of some size, also in Heerlen, or nearby. This coaster used to be at Liseberg, called Circusexpressen or something like that. Now it is called Wild Tiger Roller Coaster. There was a huge indoor greenhouse full of tropical birds flying around, even a gator. These porcupines were huge. And disturbing. They had two white lions, a female and a male (off camera). The classic self-operated zip line with safety bar that had no lock! Not one, but two Nautic Jets! And two camels! (one camel is off camera) Some monkeys that you could feed. Then it was on to Valkenburg. We found the theme park closed, due to an electricity outage. I wasn't buying it. Valkenburg is a old fortified city with ruins dating to the 12th C. There are ancient caves in the hills. They have a huge sand sculpture display of the Christmas story in these caves. This was the big finale sculpture. We rode up the chair lift to ride the alpine slide! You get one ride down on the right slide... Then you ride up and get another run on the left slide! Fun! Then we checked out the Christmas markets in the caves. There are several of these. It was interesting to shop in a cave, but not really our thing. We were tired and still had a 2 1/2 hour drive home. Tons of tourists. Thank you for sharing our weekend and checking out our report! Happy Holidays!

+1 Chuck. Oh, I forgot to mention that it looked like one or both of the log flumes was getting torn out. I don't know the park too well, but I put my camera over a construction fence and saw some of this: Something's getting torn out. Colorado Adventure can been seen to the left. Anyone who knows the park well know what's going on here?

First, I just want to say: Great Trip Report! Very very nice photography. Quality stuff. I missed this report when you posted it back in June, and my wife and sister-in-law and I just visited Phantasialand on Saturday. We had gone there back in January 2009 (with another TPR friend) and we knew the big new attraction was Maus au Chocolat from the website. I loved the ride, but I was totally blown away when I saw the ride system was the same as TSM! Anyone know the builder, as tt.repo.man asked? StealthFan, you're shooting rodents with chocolate! Even Elissa can handle that. Especially when she gets to hear the mice chatter squeekily in German. I do recommend visiting Phantasialand during the winter season. All the coasters remain open, and many attractions are indoors. The park is full of special lighting and displays, and there are plenty of open fires for warming up. Lots of hot cocoa and gluwein (really sweet red wine serve warm) too. Once again, great great report.

I'm bummed that I'm not going on the Dubai trip. !@#$% boss.

Very interesting coaster art installation: www.fastcodesign.com/1665522/a-roller-coaster-for-wimps-you-walk-instead-of-ride#1 I think the loop is the hard part of getting this credit.

Those new clusters they had were awesome, dippin' dots clustered in chocolate, both strawberry and chocolate dots. Hopefully Robb will post the pic of us enjoying the dippin' awesomeness.

Er...um...we were signed up for it and...decided to sleep in instead. I know, but Jack and Jaqui had us out very late for Mickey's Very Merry Xmas Party the night before. You had to be at OCCC at 05:30 for the buses and we just needed to sleep instead. For what it's worth, we were told in advance that no cameras were permitted on the tour, including cell phone cameras. I talked to someone who did do it and he said it was just okay. The highlight was the engine room for Tower. The agenda was Tower, Rock'n Roller Coaster, and Fantasmic. Tour cost was about $100 per person, which included breakfast.

^^^ Giving credit where it's due, Cheryl was the quarterback for this trip.

Funderland is only open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in November, and we were there midweek. But even some of the "open" parks weren't open. Thanks for checking it out, Chuck and 6flagsbrad!

I can't tell if you're serious or not, Bob!

Our California adventure continued with a trip to Valencia during the day, then a brush with Hollywood stardom at night, then more Disney fun the next day, and then a swing up to San Francisco. Magic Mountain! You can see the giant spider on Colossus in the distance. In true whore fashion, we rode both sides (one backwards) so that we can count Colossus twice. And sadly, this photo was no help in finding our car at the end of the day. Here's the SFMM cellular tower. And sadly, Log Jammer's demise is confirmed. I would miss these staple log flume rides, so I hope there's no trend at SF starting here. Here's a big reason we're here, for Green Lantern. It's also very cool to say that we've been on all four of these (the others are in Spain, Finland, and Sweden). They're actually pretty fun, albeit a bit violent. Another big reason we're here is for this coaster. You may find this hard to believe, but nothing comes up in rcdb if you enter "Mr. Six's Dance Coaster". We stopped for a sunset drink at my cousin's place in Upper Bel Air. The 2011 Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series (Modern Family, "Halloween") also joined us for wine and cheese. Here's a more flattering photo: Me, Michael Spiller, my cousin Melanie Spiller, Cheryl. Ah, Lalaland. We were a little star struck. Next day, Disneyland and DCA! I love the new mouse ears series. Haunted Mansion Nightmare Overlay is so awesome. I missed the normal Space Mountain, but the Halloween overlay was still cool. It was actually one of those days where FastPasses didn't save you much time...just not too busy, which was great. And look who we ran into, thanks to the miracle of Facebook place tagging and texting! Ashley from Brisbane (ash.1111) from the Middle America 2010 trip! We had fun with him on California Screamin', Toy Story Mania, and... The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure. I was sorta hoping to be blown away by this (first new major Disney dark ride I've been on in a while), but I was slightly disappointed. I know, I'm not the target audience and this wasn't Disney's answer to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. They're using a new rubbery skin for the animatronics that works well in some places (Ursula was amazing) but not in others (Dancing Ariel in the party room is already falling apart - her back is coming apart - and showing wear). Oh well. Very anxiously awaiting Cars Land. Do you know the Disneyland Corn Dog story? Check it out at on YouTube. The one I had was pretty darn good. Unfortunately, we would miss World of Color on this trip. Still haven't seen it. We had other evening plans. We visited Hollywood Horror Nights at Universal Studios that evening, but my camera is so bad at night (as you can see), that I will let Robb's excellent report satisfy you on that front, although Robb is missing the Terror Tram, which was incredible. You can find the official TPR report, definitely worth visiting, at: http://bit.ly/t16wiW We had one more day at Disneyland Resort, mostly shopping and hitting a few attractions, such as Bad Tower and Indiana Jones. I gave Ariel's Undersea Adventure another try. Meh. All in all we had a great time. Then, whores that we are, we flew to San Francisco, hijacked my sister and her car and drove to Roseville, on the wrong side of Sacramento, to hit another John's Incredible Pizza Co. Yes, we are whores. Then we drive to Funtown at Micke Grove State Park in Lodi. Woe is us, the credit is down. They think the guy who fixes it is on vacation. They can't get him on the phone. Not to be deterred, we zip back south to the Oakland Zoo and score Tiger Express! The next day we drove all the way to Concord to find Pixieland closed (this is *after* we called to verify they were open, which a live person on the phone did), so we then went to San Jose to find this charming zoo, Happy Hollow. Credit. The Pacific Fruit Express. They had cool animals too, like a jaguar, meerkats, and lemurs. This was also Dias de Los Muertos and Cheryl and my nephews marched in the procession through the Mission District. We had a great dinner with family and friends at Cha Cha Cha afterwards. My nephews. My Cheryl. I didn't attend the procession as I was still reeling from the after-effects of a flu shot at the Valencia Rite Aid. That's it! Thanks for checking out our report!!!!

Well looks like the small brother of the BoosterMaxx by Fabbri.... Is that the model that failed at Tibidabo?

After flying AMS-LHR-JFK-LAX in a single day, Cheryl and I got us a cheap little car at Hertz and started bouncing around the Southland for some crappy parks and credits. It was a blast, of course, especially hitting 5 different "parks" on the first day. Hidden in the trees is the clue to our location. First stop: Riverside, California. We're still not sure if the pizza is incredible, or the company. Of course, this Wisdom coaster was incredible. Cheryl insisted on the usual 9 circuit ride. The salad bar wasn't incredible, but it was pretty good. Next stop, Castle Park, also in Riverside. This sign at the entrance was a bit disconcerting. Not typically found at family entertainment areas. Sadly, Screamin' Demon, the Fabbri spinning mouse, was down. But Merlin's Revenge, the Vekoma Junior, was in operation. A nice surprise was the Dentzel carousel, built in 1904 or 1907, depending on the source. It was built for Hersheypark, then moved to Knott's, and finally to Castle in 1985. Apparently 2/3 of the animals are fiberglass repros, but it's still a nice menagerie carousel, which we commonly see in Europe and not so much in the USA. We also whored Little Dipper, this Miler kiddie. They also have a Ghost Blasters, a decent shooting Sally dark ride. They have essentially the same ride at Nick Universe at MoA, Elitch Gardens, and it's called Ghost Hunt at Lake Compounce. Any differences between these? They're all pretty similar. And fun. We moved on to Ontario, California, to the oddly themed, Scandia Amusement Park. Scandia Screamer was our first stop. Little Dipper was the next stop. We were also somewhat amazed by this travelling version of an S&S Screaming Swing. Anyone ever seen one like this before? Our next stop was Adventure City in Anaheim, notorious for not allowing adults w/o kids, but show your enthusiast credentials, and they'll give you a discount. Treetop Racers is fun because the little kids riding can't even see out of the car. This model can be found also at Lakeside, Funtown Pier, and Wonderland. Cheryl wouldn't be smiling after this ride. She felt something crack on a sharp turn and complained for the rest of the trip that she'd bruised a rib. She's the doctor, so who can argue? Ride defensively, folks. Our final stop of the day was Pacific Park at the Santa Monica Pier. Little did we know... These bumper air boat things were fun. And the West Coaster was fun. Two circuits! Thanks for joining us on our West Coast Whore! I mean Tour! More tomorrow.