larrygator

^Have you sat in on Six Flags meetings to know how these decisions are made? Have you ever taken a business class? Had to make a business decision? No, No, and No! You can not claim that Paramount treated parks equally out of the kindness of their hearts. That is a foolish statement. Amusement parks are business and a sucessful business makes smart business decisions based on return on investment.

Socialism is bad! Parks should earn capital investments based on attendance and more importantly REVENUE.

Someone get me a picture of "The Ark" at SFDK and the Monsoon Falls sign for the Park Index. I hope you all have an awesome time!

I had no trouble riding Buzz Lightyear over and over again the last hour that the park was open on the two days of the TPR visit in 2008.

I read it in the Daily Planet!

Winjas

Why do people keep talking about Shapiro and SF being responsible for converting Medusa and S:ROS to Bizarro, when everyone knows Lex Luthor did it? SHEESH!

As someone who lost quite a bit of money on the stock during the Snyder/Shapiro days. I don't think we can understate the job Shapiro did in cleaning up the parks and motivating personnel. It was not an easy task when you look at where the company was when Shapiro came on board. However, you are correct that as a public company, fiscal oversight is are huge. However, I don't think the fiscal turnaround could start at the company until front line attitude and appearance changed. I think it was a losing proposition from the get go to change both in the time frame Shapiro had when also saddled with so much debt. Moving forward the only way to turn it around is increased gate prices (so folks but that's a fact). However, as unwelcome as that may sound, it would be even more unwelcome if Shapiro has tried to institute higher gate prices with dirty parks and uncaring park personnel.

Once I stop banging my head against the wall I'm going to start pulling out my hair.

Claudia did have "toga-like" clothes but I attributed it to the pregnancy. What langauge was Claudia speaking when she arrived, was it Latin or Spanish? I can't recall. The clothes that the others in the village were wearing looked more middle ages than Roman times, although the knife that the MiB had was more Roman looking. Either way, older than the Black Rock.

What about if the trash cans had advertising on them? I see where you are coming from Joey. Maybe it's because I consider Cedar Fair parks to be amusement parks but the abundance of garbage cans doesn't bother me. I have to say if it wasn't for enthusiast websites, I still wouldn't even notice the volume of them. Actually even with it being mentioned constantly on this site, I still don't notice it unless someone points it out.

1 - You don't need to be rich to afford a Flash Pass, especially with the dirt cheap season pass prices at SF. (Sorry to repeat you Steve) 2 - Somebody forgot to train the ride ops at Volcano: Blast Coaster and Flight of Fear to move quickly and efficiently. 3 - Flash Pass is a way for parks to increase revenue and provide a better park experience.

SFARegular - Do you not understand that those with Fastpass are paying for a better park experience? Does it also bother you when you sit on a plane in coach that some people paid more to sit in First Class? Does it bother you that others paid more for their cars and are driving much nicer vehicles? Does it bother you that rich people spends millions to live in bigger houses than you?

^I'm going to have to say this epsiode was before the Black Rock crashed and that the form that Jacob was talking to as the BlackRock approached was Smokey in Men in Black form. It seems Smokey is always able to take the shape of a dead person, although it is not clear why in the present he can not change from John Locke to someone else's form. Must be some unexplained rule, like whoever he appears as at when Jacob dies becomes his permanent "human" form. But either way, another question. The other thing that makes me believe this epsiode happened before Black Rock was the wine bottle that the "mother" shared with Jacob. It appeared to be the same bottle that the Man in Black broke when the Black Rock was coming, or was that after the ship crashed.

Who cares about Monster? The big improvement at this park was the introduction of the greatest shooting attraction of all time: Desperado, called Sheriff's Academy at Walygator Parc.

If the choice is to have garbage on the ground or in the trash cans, I'll take all the trash cans they can provide.

I still don't see what old questions were answered. They told us a lot of background that I don't recall anyone asking about. Jacob and MiB were not born on the island - not an answer to me since I don't remember anyone asking where they came from. Jacob and MiB are brothers - so what, does that really advance the story more than them just being adversaries OK we found out that their mother's murderer made it so they couldn't kill each other, but just knowing that those were the rules was suffice to me. Now I want to know who this damn woman is and how she got to the island. I never cared about how Jacob got there before. Adam and Eve - Yes, it's nice to have an answer, but who cares. How does this advance the storyline? OK - Showing how the Smoke Monster was created was useful, but if the Man in Black (as Christian) instructed Locke to turn the donkey wheel, couldn't he have just turned it himself and left the island.

Just out of curiousity, but do you have some kind of deep dark childhood secret that you need to share that involved you being trapped in a box or something? To be fair, I have not read all of your posts on TPR, but I do seem to remember many of your posts on the SFA thread being focused on this idea that Six Flags is going to enclose their premier coasters because Kings Dominon and Kings Island has. Not trying to be mean, but to be realistic, I think that the chances they do that are very slim. -Gary "But what do I know, one of my home parks has their's enclosed" T. Gary - You already know about enclosing Joker's Jinx, but here's a recap of his dozens of posts: SFA is awesome but should be more awesome SFA is under appreciated for SF management SFA needs to follow their "Master Plan" SFA needs more flats rides SFA needs a B&M SFA should get the old SFA stand-up SFA doesn't need a Tony Hawk Big Spin A building is part of the master plan SF parks need to stay open later during Fright Fest SFA needs more haunted houses for Fright Fest

I think you should just save him the time and money and send him an e-mail about how to fix SFA.

I had a chance to stop by the construction site today, but I only had my camera phone and I can't figure out how to enlarge these photos. Construction is coming along nicely as a half dozen rides are under construction or nearly finished, including the wild mouse. I'm going to try to swing by again next week with a better camera. Through a hole in the fence you can see that the Wild Mouse appears close to complete. From the entrance to The Cyclone you you see the top level of the Wild Mouse. Frisbee type ride and the new parachute drop. From a opening for construction trucks I got a better view of some rides, like the Frisbee I'm a little Tea Cup short and stout. This appears to be a Wave Swinger Sorry this picture came out so bad, because I think this is the unique flying ride they are building.

Checking the park's website is always a good start. The information you desire is there. A link to Alton Towers website can be found in TPR's Park Index. Alton Towers Page

When I visited in 2008 Crush's Coaster was the one ride that got a very long line and didn't have FastPass, at least it didn't in 2008. On one of your days you should try to get to Studios at open and rush to Tower of Terror to get FastPass' and then hustle over to Crush's Coaster. Some might even say to go to Crush's Coaster first and then get your ToT FastPass. On the other day you should try to get a Haunted Mansion or Bug Thunder Mountain FastPass at open and ride the other attraction immediately after.

Awesome JimmyBo, I'm still leery about riding any rides at any fair.

How is this episode helping me? Does it really answers any questions that I had before. No, not really. All it's doing is answering questions that I never even thought of before. EDIT: OK, the last 5 minutes added something.

Such a selfless soul. It just goes to show that if you are nice to others good things will happen to you. I couldn't agree with you more about the allure of these older traditional amusement parks.