dannerman

Hey all, I know I've been dormant for just about as long as the off-season, but there's been a lot going on personally... Finally just signed up for Coasting For Kids @ Dorney Park (and naturally joined Team TPR). This will make my 3rd Coasting for Kids at Dorney, and I'm excited to participate again this year! If you want to donate to my page, here's the link: https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/timothy-danner/DorneyPark

Well, it looks from your profile like you're in Arizona, so I think shoveling snow would be out Seriously, though, my best advice to be what I did years ago for my first WCB way back in 2005 - save up allowance, do odds/ends for the family/friends/neighbors, and also make/rely on help from friends (either from your area that you already know that you can convince to go with, or through the site) to help out with breaking down some of the other charges (like hotel, rental car, gas, etc). Edit - added the following reply to an earlier message: Also it appears that U-Haul still rents to younger drivers (someone recently mentioned this in a Photo TR), not sure at what age in California but might be worth looking into if you are comfortable driving a van. Budget rents to under-25, but charges a $25/day extra fee. That's what I had to do until I turned 25 because no other rental companies would rent to me.

I hope this doesn't sway you against it, but I really like #4. To me, it looks more professional than the others. Along with the tag line, it almost seems to say "We love to have fun and act young where appropriate, but when we need to, we can be adults." Also seeing it at the top of the page already looks REALLY good, BTW!

I'm definitely looking forward to it, especially since I had to cancel out of the Australia trip It's so much fun every year. I've been going every year since 2005, which would make this my 7th year!

Here's an idea for you... You could always get a gold season pass for one of you, and after purchasing/processing, buy a one-day ticket (you get a discount on one-day tickets for friends). Then if you do decide to go back, you'd still get free parking, discount on one-day tickets as well, plus you'd still get the 20% off everything in the park (including skyzip, food, souvenirs, etc). Just a thought.

You're going to love it! That price is a steal for a jacuzzi room - see what I mean about it being an 'EconoHilton'... LOL. While I've never had a jacuzzi room myself (yet), a couple years ago I was there with a couple of friends, and 2 of them decided to get engaged that week, and they had a jacuzzi room, so I have been in them. They are very nice rooms, even nicer than the "regular" ones I stay in... and THOSE are very nice rooms. LOL. You will not be disappointed in this hotel. I hope you have a great time in the park, too! As for tickets, especially since you'll be in town to potentially be at the park 3 days, I would strongly encourage that one of you get the Gold season pass. (You can even ask if he would get the military discount for that, which I think he would). The 20% off everything in the park adds up VERY quickly, especially with how good the food is there.

Funny... with the exception of the failed launch on an Intamin LIM, I've never seen a ride timeout. And I have seen valleys. I have, however, seen errors thrown when a train attempts to enter an occupied block. *shrugs*. ymmv, because ride systems *ARE* different. Despite whether you want to consider harness sensors or display screens differences, how about differences in programming: Morgan will throw an error on a block stop. B&M does not. Some rides don't even have a computer controlling blocks at all. So how exactly would Phoenix time out at Knoebel's? My point was not necessarily to go into detail regarding block systems. My point was just that it is possible and feasible that ride ops, in certain situations, may not notice a missing/stuck train. Edit: Just wanted to let everyone know, I'm done with this thread. If you want to continue to flame to feel better, be my guest. I'm sorry I complimented a job well done on the part of the park and its employees who responded much faster than any park in the US would have done.

Heehee, that would be me... I really can't recommend this hotel enough if you're looking for something to stay on a budget. It's tough to find though. I think it was actually under a different name before adopting the Econo Lodge name, because it's website is unique. http://www.econolodge-pigeonforge.com/ I just did a quick price quote for August 6-7 and came up with $89.99. Add in 1 regular season pass, and 1 gold season pass and your total would be another 89 and 122 for a total of $301, but that would also let you go to Dollywood on both days, free parking (and you can get your money back from parking the first day after you buy the season pass, too), and the gold pass gets you 20% off *EVERYTHING* in the park... souvenirs, food, and even skyzip. I've never tried Q-Bot there because I've never seen lines that would make it worthwhile, but I'm sure you'd get 20% off that too with the gold pass. Oh, and the food there is SO good (especially the Cinnamon Bread from the Grist Mill!) That and with a single-day ticket to Dollywood being $55.90, as my fiancee mentioned the passes pay for themselves with 2 visits. It's a 10-hour drive for us, and I've had a gold season pass since 2006!

First off, my "time" was an estimate of what would have happened if this incident occurred at a typical park in the U.S. It was not a stopwatch of what happened in this case. Second, have you ever actually operated a coaster? I mean *ANY* coaster (preferably more than one to see the differences between ride systems). I've had the pleasure of operating a Morgan, 2 B&Ms, an Intamin, not to mention very good friends with others who have operated a Maurer Shoone (sp?), an additional B&M, Vekoma, 2 different types of Intamin, and others. Safety systems/sensors vary greatly from ride to ride - even within the same manufacturer. Of the 3 B&Ms I mentioned, one didn't even have a computer screen to give ride errors to the ops (*GASP!*), and of the 2 I operated personally, one had harness sensors and one did not. Also, there are different types of sensors along the course. Most coasters don't have a "we didn't see the coaster go by" sensor to trigger an alarm as you're indicating in your post. Actually, I'm not aware of any one that does. It would be tough to design such a sensor since the ride time can actually fluctuate by several seconds due to temperature, weight on the train, etc. (In fact ride photos depend upon a photo eye to sense when a train gets to a particular spot to snap the photos because they can't go on a time delay or the photos would be off.) There are 2 types of sensors - photo eyes that show the presence of a train (in theory.. basically it says whether or not there is something in the beam), and proxes. The proxes "count" the presence of metal as the axles go by. For example, Steel Force at Dorney Park has 6 cars. So the prox counts to 6, and then the prox system essentially says the train went by. In either case, the ride system will *NOT* give an error if the train valleys or otherwise gets stuck (unless it gets stuck IN a brake block). The ride system will only give an error if the next train attempts to enter the brake block before the system thinks the last train left by counting 6 axles. This is why a ride system can shut down from a foil gum wrapper. If it blows against a prox, that counts one axle. Then the train goes by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and the actual 6th axle it thinks is axle 1 of the next train, so it shuts the ride down. (Add in the fact that the prox counts actually run in duplicate with 2 separate sets of proxes, so technically it would shut it down due to a discrepency in the prox counts because it figures SOMETHING is amiss, even though it might not know exactly what). In other words, if Steel Force were running only 2 trains and one of them valleyed between the 2 big hills, and they were dealing with some issue in the station that the ride ops didn't dispatch the train for 5 minutes, it could potentially be 5 minutes before an employee would even notice that the train didn't make it over the second hill. However most employees as they're dealing with the train in the station would realize that it's been longer than usual, and the next train hasn't gotten back to the waiting block behind the station yet, then start looking around the track to find where it is. Typically it would be in another brake block due to some other, unrelated, ride error. Further, if the train were truly block stopped some ride systems do NOT give a ride error at all. The block stop is designed in case one train "catches up" to the other one. I was on the Wild Mouse at Hershey (the cars do not, normally, stop in the station) once with a couple of... "large friends", and our car actually caught up to the one in front of us so much that when the car got to the end of the station, the ride system stopped the cars in the station waiting until the proper spacing was there for dispatch. There were no ride errors. Another example, if the employees at Talon dispatch a train but do NOT bring the other train into the station for whatever reason (someone runs out onto the platform, loses control of a basketball that goes into the ride path, etc), the ride system will let the train go through the ride course, then stop it (pretty hard, actually) in the brakes at the very end of the ride. The system will NOT give a ride error, because nothing is, technically, "wrong". The block system prevented a collision, as it's intended to do, and will wait until the other train is brought into the station, and then release the brakes on the other train allowing it to advance. It will only give an error if there is a discrepency in the sensors (i.e. something blocking the photo eye but the prox system says there is no train there like the ride ops do during a morning test, or a mismatch in the prox counts as I illustrated earlier with the gum wrapper example) So with that said, it could very well be 2 minutes, if not longer, before an employee notices the train stuck upside down, as most likely the ride system would not have given an error until the next train attempted to enter the block.

I wonder if the poncho was the property of one of the riders and got away from them and/or dangled into the wheel assembly, or if it was someone else's. Also, I have to give kudos to the park staff for being able to get them out in only 20 minutes. That's a pretty quick response time for... 1. Someone to NOTICE that the car hasn't come back yet. 2. Realize exactly WHERE the car is stuck at. 3. Grasp the gravity of the situation (pun very much intended) and CALL for help. 4. Supervision/Management to respond and get up to speed on exactly what's going on. 5. DETERMINE that they need to somehow get up there to get the people out since they are stuck upside down. 6. Maintenance (presumably) to get the call that they need a manlift. 7. CLEAR the way of the manlift so it can get into position. 8. DRIVE the manlift to where it needs to be (those aren't exactly speed racers, you know). 9. FIGURE OUT how they are going to use that manlift to SAFELY get the riders out once the harnesses are manually unlocked. 10. CARRY OUT that plan. Edit: My estimates on the above steps if it were your "typical" park here in the U.S.: 1. 2 minutes 2. 30 seconds 3. 2 minutes, 30 seconds 4. 5 minutes (2 minutes to respond, 3 minutes to understand) 5. 2 minutes 6. 5 minutes 7. 10 minutes, at least 8. 10 minutes 9. 5 minutes 10. 15 minutes. Total tally: 57 minutes, or almost an hour.

Nah, just another postponed meeting. Although this would explain why the units soared more than $1 per unit yesterday to over $12/unit.

I could be wrong, but here are some ideas... The 2 trains pictured one page 1 are two distinct colors in the light trails... also, it's been about a year since I've been down there so I may be recalling incorrectly, but it looks to me like there's a solid color stripe in the light trail right where the colored stripe is on the current design... perhaps the system will pick that up? Another thing that I thought about... WDW isn't just one huge track... there are distinct lines. While I'm sure there are probably various transfer tracks, etc. so that any given monorail can be relatively easily put on any of the lines, if you keep it consistent (i.e. only the tronorails go on a particular line on a given day, which it said Epcot in the OP) then the system can adjust. When you have white and stripe, it looks for the color stripe.... when you have tronorail, it would look for the color of the light trail... One last thing I thought about... it's Disney. I mean, seariously... it's *DISNEY* we're talking about. They innovate so much that they even made up a word to refer to their innovators - imagineers! If they wanted/needed to, I'm sure they could come up with a new system and/or modify another system accordingly. If not, I'm sure it wouldn't be too expensive to add bumpers Oh yeah, I almost forgot to comment... I like them, and I second the idea to have the light trails.... light up at night - or even better (which would take a lot in special effects, but it would be so cool) have a trail of light follow the monorail at night! (maybe even as simple as a small fog machine trailing it with a colored spotlight to match the color on the train?)

That's a "generic" email for everyone after they sign up to allow time for Robb to do all the other stuff he does (like his "real job", not to mention the huge amount of time he puts into the site, the club, the trips, etc). In fact, he even said that most likely you'll get it sooner, that's just a worst case scenario. From my interactions, he also likes to maximize everyone's fun through the site (and on the trips), evidenced in the fact that he even had a soft opening as well! I'm not EXPECTING to have it before I leave on Thursday, but I know that in the past I have always had things from California within 3 days of when it was posted... even with "regular" shipping... whether it's the USPS, UPS, or FedEx (including my SFMM Season Pass renewal for the past 5 years, some Knott's-related stuff, as well as random retailers I've bought some stuff from who are based in CA). (I have occasionally gotten it within 2 days, but that's hit or miss) Meaning that if Robb had the time to send it out today, I know for a fact I would have received it before I left Thursday afternoon. If he didn't, NO WORRIES! I understand he has a LOT on his plate right now, especially with WCB just this weekend. As I said, I'm not expecting it... it would just be another awesome bonus IF it happened. I will NOT be disappointed if it doesn't happen. Maybe it's kinda like a rollback on Dragster... Odds are that it won't happen, and I wasn't disappointed every time I rode it and it made it over... but when it happened, it was a nice surprise

No confirmation mail. I only have a Paypal receipt. This kinda stinks because I was kinda hoping that it would be in the mail first thing Monday, because as long as it posts Tomorrow, then I should get it by Thursday and be able to use it at Castles on Friday before Bash! Anywho, I'll be happy regardless though, Robb... just wondering if I need to re-submit anything? Edit: Kinda nm... I see the Club TPR forum, so at least something has gone through, LOL. As always, thank you for all you do Robb and Elissa!!

I love soft openings... done, although when I clicked 'return to merchant' it just took me back to the *ahem* soft opening as if I didn't do it.

I don't see regional happening, but I could see varying lengths... like $5 for a "day pass" good for only a specific day (may be too much for logistics or might actually hurt the overall memberships since you would essentially need 10 "day passes" to equal the year membership...) Or something like $10 for one month, $25 for 3 months, and then the $50 for the year. But really when it comes down to it... isn't Club TPR just about supporting the site to allow it to function and give us the awesome stuff we crave like the forums, Coastertube, and the trips, and all the perks and bonuses are just fancy, cool, awesome, extras?

You don't have to be rich... or famous... lol. The trips actually aren't all that expensive. Take, for example, the trip I'm doing this year - IntimidaTour... 7 days @ $1275. Doing the math, that's less than $200/day. Try to plan that trip yourself, or even with a group of 4 to split most costs. Hotel you're still looking at $15/person/night at minimum even if you try going the budget route, but most likely more like $25/person/night (or $175/person). Rental car, add on another $10/person/day($70). Food? Keep in mind, it's pretty much all fast food (not the cheapest), restaurants (expensive), and amusement park food (second mortgage?) so figure around $30/day for food, or another $210. Park admission? For sake of argument, let's figure on average 1 park/day at $50/park... that's another $350. already we're up to $805/person... if you go with a group of 4. If you're by yourself, now you're shouldering all of the costs to a tune of $1540! That's not even considering things like gas, not to mention that you'd have to do the driving, planning, and it doesn't include the skip-the-line stuff *OR* ERT that Robb and Elissa have arranged (and you don't get a cool T-Shirt to show for it, either! ). Seriously, the trips really are an outstanding value... especially considering that most of the tours with a "regular" tour company (even AAA) would cost as much if not more... and the TPR trips always include most meals and are very flexible based on events outisde of Robb's control (i.e. weather, ride closures, Swine Flu outbreaks, etc.). I don't know of ANY other tour operator that would change the tour (and even THEN it's always on what the GROUP wants to do, not just that Robb or Elissa feel like changing it) to try to maximize the fun-factor. Biggest example I can think of is when we were in Japan and we went to Toshimaen. It was overcast and misty (not even really raining, although there was previous precipitation on the ground). We had fun with a couple dark rides / walkthroughs and a tiny 4-person kiddy carousel takeover, but the credits were closed. The weather outlook was fairly negative for our purpose for coming, and I remember a night in the Disney hotel lobby where we were all crowded around Robb's laptop looking at a storm track online that was basically heading straight for us and bringing even worse weather. Robb presented us with several options based on a lot of weather researching, his previous experience/expertise, and thinking out several scenarios. Based on group vote, we got an extra day at Tokyo Disney/Tokyo Disney Sea, moved Fuji Q to the end of the trip, and went back to Toshimaen and a bunch of small park credit hopping... obviously that was an extra expense for them with the extra Disney day, extra Toshimaen admission, and extra subway fare - times 20! Yet they didn't ask for any more money. And above all, it was always about what the GROUP wanted to do given the scenario. I will gladly join Club TPR. As far as I'm concerned, I've *already* gotten enough benefit to warrant the "cost" - even if I don't "use" a single perk from the actual membership. If I do (which I likely will, lol), then that's just a value-added bonus to me. I just hope my lucky number is available when I register since it's double-digit.

What if you're actually AT your fiancee's more than at home, but you technically have 2 mailing addresses?

I read it as saying... "If you don't forward this email to 10 people, then bad stuff will happen. Take the story of John Smith who got this email. He deleted it without forwarding it on and 2 days later his wife filed for divorce. On the same day, his boss came to him and told him he was underperforming and they would have to let him go. If that wasn't enough, when he was driving to court for the divorce hearing, he got into a car accident and was in a coma for 2 months!!!!! Don't let this happen to you!!! Forward it now so you don't forget!!!!" Seriously? Do you expect people to believe your doom-and-gloom horror stories? It's just a bunch of scare tactics and misleading information to try and get people to vote for it. The kicker is how they're pleading people just to simply vote since no vote = "No" vote. I wouldn't be surprised if Stacy Frole's job for the next 2 weeks is calling EVERY unitholder and reminding them to (or even guiding through how to) vote.

(Excerpt from the unpublished benefit list:) Knoebels - Show your Club TPR Membership card and receive free parking and free admission!

Saw it. Did it. Can't wait for March 15.

My post was in reference to the magic 3 questions that get asked EVERY year, and they always comment on them... "that's one of the 3 questions we get every year..." It's actually quite amusing. Last year it went pretty far along in the Q&A before they hit all 3. I actually do forget all 3, to be honest, but I know that the OTSRs on Revolution is one of the 3. Edit: I believe that re-opening the metro is another one of the 3 (as has been mentioned) but I forget definitively what the 3rd is. Anyone there last year who remembers for certain?

Everyone knows the 3 questions that we HAVE to ask during the Q&A @ SFMM, right?

Actually, from my understanding, the debt DOES disappear. Unless I'm mistaken (which is possible, LOL), I believe Apollo has the cash outright to cover the loan payoff, which is what makes the deal so favorable. The would-be-private company has no debt, thus no loan payments, and therefore all that money that would be going to interest payments is now pure profit for Apollo. The only downside to Apollo is that their bottom-line takes a $1.6billion hit right now to cover paying off the debt.

That's what I've been telling friends and relatives... With a company like Apollo, ANYTHING can happen. Even if the company as a whole stays afloat, they may feel that they can make more money with a Harrahs, Pennsylvania and attached AMC Movie theater on the land that occupies Dorney Park (and then they can shut down the standalone theater less than a mile away and either stop paying lease on that building, sell the land it sits on, or even gain income from leasing the land to someone else if they own it). King's Dominion is a perfect location right off of 95 for suiting developers of some type of shopping mall and/or hotel area. Maybe keep the Eiffel tower on a pay-per-ride to go up as an observation tower and little else. There are, unfortunately, a lot of other (usually more profitable) options to use a lot of the land that Cedar Fair owns around the country besides the amusement parks that they are currently used for. They are not an amusement park operator. They are a money-maker. Not saying that Cedar Fair isn't in it to make money because obviously they are, but they are there to make money from amusement parks. That's what they do. They may turn an underperforming park into a waterpark and ship the rides elsewhere, but at least a lot of the rides went elsewhere, and did so fairly quickly. They didn't sit, rusting, on the used ride market. If I still owned shares/units, I'd vote against the deal... LOL. I think the company isn't doing anywhere as near as bad as the [mis-]management team would want people to believe. They're all getting OLD. What do old people do? They retire. They're trying to get a HUGE retirement check while they have influence, that's all. Either that or they're trying to artificially inflate the value of the stock based off the merger, planning for it to fail, and counting on a recovering economy to keep the stock price afloat once that happens.