R.C.

I don't even want to know what happened to Big Bird while you guys were there... lol. It looks like Sesame Place was a good bonus park. I wonder what your 100th coaster was?

Great PTR so far Sam! It looks like you had a great time at SFGAdv. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of your pictures!

^It's $12 bucks if your an ACE member, but it's $36 for non-ACErs... I have a feeling that he wanted to know if there was a discount, because he has a season pass and isn't an ACEr. $36 still isn't too bad, but it's not as good as $12!

My first roller coaster with inversions was Vortex at what was Paramount's Great America. I was about 10 and we were there for their Girl Scout day with my sister. It was cool, because the park wasn't very busy. I got on everything except Stealth, because I was too scared of the flying position... Photo Credit: Joel Rodgers RCDB.com My first coaster with inversions should have been at SFDK, but I was too scared of them every time we went there....

I'm watching the Raiders vs. 49ers game right now. It's too bad the 49ers are down 0-7.....

You've got some very good photos here, except for the last one, lol. It's cool to see these trips from an attendee's perspective that isn't also Robb's perspective. I can't wait to see more of your photos. This trip sounded like it was an awesome short trip. Thanks for the pictures of Whirlwind. I wanted to see just how big that coaster actually was.

lol. You're missing one thing and it should be in spot #3. A quickly and crudely done NoLimits "pre-creation" is posted in the roller coaster gaming thread about an hour after the initial announcement and is mentioned in the coaster thread a couple of times to get people to look at it.

My very short list: USA (Home Country) Mexico El Salvador Unfortunately there are no permanent roller coasters in El Salvador, so that trip didn't accomplish anything coaster wise...

Have a great time on the East Coast trip, Sam. I can't wait to see how Medusa East compares to Medusa West for you. Enjoy all of the new credits...

^Yeah, Kong was bad on Thursday. I'm just glad we got on with a walk-on... I have to agree with you, Mechanic. SFDK has gotten so much better in the last few years. The ride ops have become a lot more efficient. On Thursday it seemed like Medusa didn't stack at all, unless they ran into a big problem. The first time I got on Medusa I rode in the back and the guy next to me took off his veterans hat and put it around the seat belt. The ride ops noticed it and politely asked him to put it on the ground to the side of the station. He refused and tried to play the "I'm a veteran, I can do what I want" card. The ops kept politely asking him to leave it in the station. We ended up sitting there for about ten minutes, before the guy decided it wasn't worth it. The ride ops did a great job of remaining polite while enforcing the rules! It's nice to hear that both Kong and Roar are finally running two trains!

My favorite Vekoma has to be Déjà Vu at SFMM. I really liked it and I didn't think it was rough at all. I thought it was much better than a normal boomerang and it was much better than Kong... That's not saying much though. I really think that the GIBs are Vekoma's Shinning stars, but I haven't been on any newer Vekomas.

Great trip report! I'm really glad you and your family had a great time at the park. The different experiences that you can have at SFDK are what makes SFDK such a great park. It is too bad that you weren't able to get on Tony Hawk, it is a fun little ride and you didn't miss anything by not going on Kong. I'm inclined to agree with you're rankings for V2 and Medusa's drops. They are both great and I have a hard time deciding which one I like better. It is too bad that Roar has only been running one train this season. I'm not entirely sure what's up with the second train, but it's been missing the entire season.

It looks like you guys had a great time at both SFDK and CGA. It's too bad I could join you guys . Oh well, I was in El Salvador... You guys both got some good pictures. Next up is SFGadv for Sam. I can't wait to hear your opinion on Medusa East.

Thanks for pointing that out! I love new bathrooms I want to got to Waterworld some day. I've heard that it is awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing how the TPR East Coast Trip goes for you!

It sounds like you had an awesome trip. I've got to get to CP in the next couple of years. Now you get to go on the East Coast trip and get even more credits. There is still a lot of summer left for you!

^ Those are the same problems that I have with Firefox. I don't do a whole lot of Instant Viewing on Netflix, but I do have to use IE for my online college classes. Overall I do like Firefox 3. It looks really nice. The only problem that I have really found is that it doesn't always open a page on the first try. There are times when I have to refresh the page to get it to load right.

^Agreed. The rest of the park is really cramped together. It should be pretty easy to spread out the Halloween section a little bit. The one thing I don't like about the woody is the water fall around the turn around. It's just extremely unrealistic.

Shirt: CGA FireFall First Rider t-shirt Pants: Black shorts Underwear: Tighty Whities!

I agree. I really liked Zonga in the front row or the back row, but any where in the middle was extremely cramped and rough. I thought it was better than Kong, but I still only rode it a few times each time I was at the park.

^That's what I've been wondering. I've heard that next season is supposed to be all about the "Oceanic 6" trying to get back to the island and then the season after that will be about what happens when they get back. It will be interesting to see if we get any information about what's happening on the island next season. I hope we do, because I want to see what "bad" things have been happening.

(^Yeah, me too! Heroes starts in late September!) The finale was really good. I also felt like the show was ending when they were rescued. I'm really excited to find out what's been happening on the island that so bad. I can't wait for the next season.

Tony Hawk's Big Spin @ SFDK on Friday night. Oh yeah!

Vandalism is bad at SFDK. People are always scratching their initials into the wood on the stations for Boomerang and Roar. People also write on the walls in the other stations with markers. I'm sure there is a lot worse vandalism at other parks though. I believe that the chain link fence in front of the signs is part of the themeing and to keep people from messing with the signs. The first sign is farther away from the queue than the rest of the signs and it doesn't have the chain link fence... Also, I agree with Goliath513. The THBS restraint was never so tight on me that it kept me from feeling the air time on the last two hills. It was probably just because the operators weren't pushing it really tight. I thought the hill going into the brake run gave a good amount of ejector air time for how small the coaster is.

Here is my part of the trip report from before Sam got to the park: The Tony Hawk logo. This logo can also be found on the trash cans around the ride. I got to the park at about 10:00am and people were already riding Tony Hawk's Big Spin. When I got through the gates I found out that THBS was open to the public at this time even though the park wasn't technically open (I'll explain this shortly). So I headed over to THBS and jumped in line. The line was pretty long at this point, but I wanted to ride it. After 10 minutes THBS had technical difficulties. I decided to wait it out, since nothing else was open yet and I've been on the other rides a lot. Every time they announced that the ride was down, a few people left the line. After about 30 minutes of downtime, they announced that the ride was going to be down for a long time, that they had a guy from Gerstlauer who was trying to fix the ride, and that the rest of the park was now open. Almost everyone left the line at this time. There were about 15 of us that decided to keep waiting. It looked like they were working on the motor for the lift hill, but I couldn't really tell. This was where two of the five operating trains stopped during the break down. While I was waiting I talked with the ride operators who told me that the park had been open since 7am that morning. It was supposed to be for the press only, but the general public were also let in. This is why so many people were already in the park and riding THBS. The ride was down for about 1 hour and 20 minutes when the ride operators decided to give us a free Flashpass that we could only use on THBS once it was back up. After about 2 hours of downtime the ride was fixed and it ran for the rest of the day without any major problems. Now what you really want: More Pictures! Yes, I finally decided to join TPR.