CoasterGuy06

First Park: SFOG First New Park: Carowinds First Coaster: Goliath First New Coaster: I305 Oops...just realized I visited USH on 1/6 so my answers should really be USH and Mummy for those.

Most, if not all, coasters with ratcheting restraints have 2 ratchets in case the other one fails.

Six Flags Over Georgia Opryland Visionland/Alabama Adventure Waterville USA Sea World San Antonio Six Flags Fiesta Texas Lake Winnie Kings Dominion Busch Gardens Williamsburg Six Flags America Universal Studios Florida Islands of Adventure Dollywood Universal Studios Hollywood

18/20

The very first ferris wheel I ever rode. It was at a school carnival ghetto fair spectacular, and the thing looked and sounded like it had not had any work done to it in years.. Took me several years to get up the nerves to ride another wheel.

Before everyone starts advocating freeing the orcas, you might want to read up on Keiko, the whale from Free Willy. Even after he was freed he still tried to interact with humans, he lost a bunch of weight due to him not eating, and his trainers wound up having to relocate him and feed him until he died.

This was a Premier decision! Premier made a lot of strange unintelligent decisions, like buying so many parks in the first place! While I would normally agree, Premier was originally a real estate company and at the time they were buying up parks many of the executives were still from the real estate business. One would think they would be well aware of real estate laws/contracts. That is a catastrophic mistake to pay that much and be left empty handed when the lease is up.

Six Flags paid $64 million dollars for KK back in 1997. That's a lot of money to pay to ONLY manage a park, because remember that price only included what, 20 out of 58 acres? I was able to skim through the motion filed by the KSFB against Six Flags, and granted I am not a lawyer, but all it did was cite previous property cases in Kentucky when a landlord was able to maintain materials left after a lease had been broken. It did mention there were clauses in the lease that prevented Six Flags from removing rides/equipment, but it did not actually cite any specific clause in the lease. Granted I was only quickly reading it between classes earlier today so I could be wrong, but that was the gist of it as I remember.

You would think they would have realized Premier changed their name 10 freaking years ago.

I would imagine that anything that was added under Ed Hart world be considered a Premier/Six Flags addition since their "purchase" of KK was likely just taking over the park's lease from Hart. The fairboard might have rights to any rides that were installed prior to the reopening in 1990, but checking the parks Wikipedia entry it doesn't look like many of those rides are still around.

It really is kind of weird, since it really feels like its just been a "ho-hum" day since so many recruits committed early this year. Still happy with the class Alabama pulled in.

Ya'll wouldn't know what to do without me

I am planning on spending my 7th summer working in rides at Alabama Adventure this summer.

I visited Universal Studios Hollywood for the first time a couple of weeks ago when I was in Cali. That's it so far.

Mine for the next couple of weeks:

It could be they are fixing it up. SFFT removed the Superman from the top of S:KC back in 2006 to rehab it and it has since returned to the ride.

A common theme I keep seeing is that it's bad because it is illegal. Just because something is illegal does not make it a bad thing. Many things we would not consider bad today were illegal at one time. Granted I have never tried marijuana, in large part because it is illegal, but I see no reason to keep it illegal when cigarettes and alcohol are legal.

I remember those days...fun times.

Here are a couple of pics of me taken from the TPR Deep South trip update. ICEBAT! Operating Rampage for TPR!

I cannot stand people that do not understand how the whole que gate system works. School days are the worst. No matter how many times you announce to board the row you are waiting for you have idiots running from the middle rows to the front or back seat as soon as you open the gates.

Yes, Alabama Adventure did install Cedar Point's old fountain.

Well really up until the last decade or so PTC was the only company that made wooden trains (sure there were a few coaster here and there that used a different company, but those were few and far between). Now Intamin, GCI, and The Gravity Group all have their own train design so you see a bigger variety. The reason parks bought Gerstlauer trains is simple. Back when CCI was in business they were a one stop shop for wooden coasters. A park would call them and CCI would design, construct, order all the parts (brakes, trains, q-gates, etc.) for the parks. Well they had a nasty habit of submitting really low bids for projects, which resulted in them falling behind on their payments to PTC. PTC then refused to do business with them, so CCI started selling Gerstlauer trains. Those parks that did buy PTC Trains (Lake Compounce, Indiana Beach, Cliff's) all bought their trains directly from PTC. In fact, when CCI went bankrupt Cliff's called PTC to find out when they were getting their train. One problem: CCI had never ordered it. That's why parks started buying Gerstlauer. Really, since CCI went out of business how many parks have bought them? Two? I believe Texas Giant will be the third to buy *new* Gerstlauer trains since CCI closed.

I really don't understand why they would use the "heartline" excuse to refuse a conversion. Do you know how many people ride B&M stand ups while sitting on the bicycle seat?

^^Yes, NBGS signed a deal with WhiteWater West for them to manufacture their Master Blaster slides.

The only way I could see Six Flags expanding their portfolio in the US would be through management contracts, and I think that would still be a ways down the road.