Coaster Cow

Oh god, I couldn't help but notice the zucchini. RELEASE YOURSELVES FROM MY BRAIN, YOU FOUL GUTTER DEMONS!

Is that really NCS? If it is, you are a god of RCT3. NCS in that game is ridiculously difficult.

I love the giant gorilla. It's like launch, loopy, OH SHIT MAN, IT'S A GORILLA! Turn, spike. Looks like fun.

Nio is over a parking lot. *Insert witty Six Flags Japanese conspiracy theory here*

Great report! Taking an unbiased view on the whole thing is a great way to go. People may call him some kind of a god, but he is what you described: a brilliant man, but a man nevertheless. I feel a lot of people here on either side of the argument should understand that.

This is true, but it's probably for the better. They have huge amounts of space on the other side, while 'Cuda Falls is pretty tight as it is. And I know you pointed this out, but the repainting actually was a nice move by the park.

That covered water ride looks so cool! It's like an enjoyable Tidal Force.

Always been interested in this guy... Source: rcdb.com

Corkscrew at Toshimaen in Japan? They look pretty Japanese to me...

It still feels a bit lifeless, the colors of the buildings are too dark and don't go together well. Your archy is pretty good, its just too random and too spread out, maybe a bit small. Having said that, I like the suspended coaster.

Good pick! It rounds them out well. I am a little surprised they are breaking from the Mack tradition, but I guess they did that with Silver Star, too. Seems like a fast one, most GCI's don't get over 60. Gives me another reason to try and go overseas!

Ummm....not likely? source: rcdb.com

Those lights just made the ride for me. I now feel like it fits in that part of the park.

I can answer #1 and 3. 1-It really is up to you. You haven't been to a real themed resort ever, so let me tell you that the bay in Portofino looks EXACTLY like a mediterranean village. It is incredibly cool, beyond a doubt. Having said that, the gardens are beautiful as well and you can walk through the bay during the day, as there is a gelato place and a couple nice restaurants. It will blow your mind, though. 3-If I remember correctly, the taxi goes straight to City Walk, no stops. It does take a while (15 minutes-ish?), though as Portofino is the farthest resort away from the parks. You can also walk if you want a pretty nice little stroll. Additional Comments- I really loved Portofino. It was Disney-par as far as theming, the pool was fantastic, the atmosphere incredible. Knowing that you've only stayed at the Contemporary, which is also a top grade resort but lacks the theming of say, the other Magic Kingdom resorts, I think it will blow your mind. Have fun!

^That's a very valid point, considering their general procession in intensity from the Legend to the Voyage to Pilgrim's Plunge to Wildebeest. I think people are thinking that maybe now they readjust their focus, as although it is definitely a destination park now, it still is essentially a park that caters to families. Having have been there, I know that it really isn't that big, it already feels too small for the rides it has in it. So I think people underestimate the need to round out their collection.

^I agree! I mentioned that I love Schwarzies. I'm such a nerd. In all honesty, I think a steel terrain coaster would work great. If they understand the wants of the public, given the recent trends, it will probably be some kind of launched, lowlying coaster with some inversions, hopefully in the woods. I'm thinking either X-car-ish or an Intamin.

Final Update! Sorry for the wait, I've been combination lazy/busy/sleeping. Lake Winnie in Chattanooga, Tennessee! Or maybe Roswell, Georgia. Or maybe not. Just kidding, it's in Georgia. Really hard to tell by the directions, though. Drove us crazy. On the drive up from Atlanta, we passed tons of signs for Rock City, the tourist trap famous for its bizarre advertising campaign where they paid farmers to write "See Rock City" on their barns all across the region. Needless to say, we were a bit pressed for time with a flight leaving at 5 that day, so we decided against it. The park: Really sweet local park! I liked it just as much, maybe even better (*gasp*) than my local park, Seabreeze. Both are super old with a solid woodie, and both have some interesting unique touches. Lake Winnie's access to the water was really cool, even if there wasn't a waterpark or anywhere to cool off. The chairlift over the water gave fantastic views, but I was much too scared of dropping my camera to try and take pics. Cannonball: Yay John Allen! Pure traditional woodie classicness, nice pacing and airtime. Overall just perfect for the park. 7/10 Wild Lightnin': One of those random traveling L&T Systems mini-wild mouses. Piece of crap, bruised me pretty good. You can kind of see it in the big overview pic below. 2/10 Wacky Worm: Just kidding, I'm not gonna review it . Drop Tower: A lot shorter than it feels. Especially how long it takes to hit the brakes. 8/10 Rolo-Plane: Ow. Riding on my head is not fun. Supposedly there's an art to riding it, but I didn't want to try a second time to perfect mine. 3/10. Boat Chute: I thought this was really cool, very historic and well preserved. Not too wet at all. 6/10 Welcome to downtown wherever the hell we are! Wait for it... Go! Welcome to Lake Winnie! This is the big attraction, Cannonball, a classic John Allen. Good ride, running smooth with a few nice pops of airtime. Artsy. Cool food pagoda thingy in the front of the park. Other side of the water. The park also has the first ever flume ride! You go through a tunnel of love-ish part before coming out into the daylight and climbing up a rickety structure. A gentle slope splashes your torpedo shaped tin can into the lake water (ew....). Good thing you don't get too wet. Spashy-splash! If Dan was a germaphobe, he would be crying right now. The park's other claim to fame is this piece of donkey crap. Originally made to train WWI pilots for the stresses of flight, you essentially hang upside down until you can summon the strength to turn the wheel in the cockpit and flip again. There's a lot of hanging upside down in pain, cursing your balls off. Yes, yes I did. They have a bunch of picnic pavilions, too. This is quite similar to the Birthday pavilion at Kenoebels. OHM NOM NOM Drinking fountain. This is their classic darkride, undergoing renovation. Apparently lunchbox on the seat means no rides for me today. Best ride in the park, beat the living bejeezus out of Acrophobia. Rode it like 10 times. Yodelay-HE-HOOOOOO They had a nice historical exhibit, too. DOMODOMODOMODOMO Lake Winnie is DEFINITELY TPR-approved. This was one of the coolest touches I've seen in a traditional park. Really cool. And that's it! Thanks for being patient, all!

Holy bejeezus. That is incredible. My favorite parts are the Pepsi sign on top the diner and what I presume is Flight Deck's tunneled batwing. I can't really think of any major criticisms; maybe the umbrellas could all be quartered white and red instead of solid.

Cool stuff! I stayed at the Blue Hotel and loved my window view of Steeplechase and the Big Dipper. Blackpool has so much history, it's definitely in my opinion the #1 place for any real classic park nerd to hit. That's right, more than Kenoebels, Kennywood, or anywhere else.

Going to Moe's.

Sorry about the delay, AP's+Track=Not Happy Time. Unfortunately no...We saw crap tons of signs for it on the way up to Lake Winnie, but we didn't have any time, as our flight out was that day. It's too bad, I've read all sorts of stuff about their barn ads and whatnot. IT'S COASTER TIME! YAAAAAYYY! We headed out to Six Flags Over Georgia the next day, Friday morn. We were half an hour into our drive with about 10 minutes to go when we realized that we had forgotten the tickets that we got online (buy one get one free!). After many profanities we turned back and headed back into downtown, only to miss our exit again. By the time we finally made it to the park, we were half an hour behind schedule. Shouldn't be a problem, right? WRONG. The parking was at the end of the inner drive, making a giant traffic jam. Looking at another half an hour out of our day, we made the best decision of the trip. Valet parking! For only $10 more ($25 versus $15), we got to plop our car down on the lawn right next to the entrance! I'd recommend it highly, it's a great time-saver. SO- overview: Goliath: Good, clean, B&M fun. Still like the old style more than the new trains. 8/10 Superman: Been there, done that, but still better landscaped than the other parking lot versions. 6/10 GASM: Classico. 6/10 Ninja: Ouchie. Cool layout, though. 3/10 Georgia Cyclone:Holy jesus. Exceeded painful expectations. 5/10 just because I could tell what it used to be. BTR:Very intense. May have just been the seat I was in, but the best Batman I've been on. 7/10 Mind Bender: Pure euphoria with a single lapbar. Anton never fails. 10/10 Georgia Scorcher: Pretty fun for a standup, especially when you know how to ride one. 6/10. Acrophobia: What the balls? Literally. This was weird. Not a great drop tower, but the interaction with the crowd in line every time a drop happened was absolutely priceless. 5/10 Monster Mansion: Neat-o, very pleasant and a great surprise. 8/10 Mine Train: Listen, I don't care about whatever historic importance you have. You are a painful mother. And your name is stupid. 2/10 Road Runner Kiddie Thingy: Fun and unique, definitely worth the awkward looks from the staff. 4/10 FIrst up, Goliath- after a 45 minute wait... The day was not looking productive, especially considering our fallback was the FlashPass, a bargain at anywhere from $52-147 for the two of us! Luckily, Superman would save the day! We managed to take out Superman, GASM, and Ninja in all of 30 minutes, greatly improving our chances of taking the entire park in a day. Awesome layout, horrible transitions. If Ninja was a ninja, I would totally survive a stealth attack. Yeah, that was a bad metaphor. Bummer. GASM wasn't that bad, though. Nice pops of airtime, definitely a very solid classic woodie. Classic amusement archy, too. Reminded me of SFOT and the Paramount Parks. We missed this guy by about a month. No testing or anything, either, still doing structural work on the station and surroundings. This looks freakin' ridiculous from this angle. Hot stuff. Next up was this guy. The valet parking actually got us pretty close to the ride. I was able to get right up to the fence. Pretty much describes the ride experience. DEATH I can definitely see where this used to be a phenomenal ride. It was excellently intense, had STEEP drops, and was tightly packed. The old age and trims were taking their toll, though. Ads? What ads? Yet another color scheme mutilated by the hands of corporate America. A moment of silence is necessary. SFOG is a very beautiful, older-style park. They have an old mine train. It kinda sucks. It's not too Dan-friendly either. Speaking of mutilated color schemes... So Mindbender is in my humble opinion the best ride at the park. Wonderful layout, intense loops, INSANE ejector airtime where you least expect it in the front seat, non-restrictive lap bars that let me nearly fall out, great visuals, including a waterfall, terrain changes, and a tunnel (*phew*). Yeah, it's that good. Definitely one of my top coasters. I <3 Schwarzies. Time for my BTR story. Thanks to the wonders of poor ride operations, we waited an hour and a half. Which wouldn't have been that bad if we didn't have school girls on either side of us who seem to have thought that the fake sewer section was a great spot to see how loud they could get. It was a shame because this was the most intense BTR I've been on yet. I just kinda like this building. Too bad Six Flags' idea of bbq is pulled pork slathered in sugar on a hamburger bun. Kiddy coaster time! I'm not totally a cre-ho tho, because this was a damn cool coaster. It starts on the rooftops... Then dives off the hill into a tunnel! Nice laterals, too. Sigh... Why a utilities company is investing in public ads at a theme park is beyond me. This was mildly amusing. Horrible pic, but this is the facade for the new Monster Mansion, which was fantastic! Great quality, felt at home at a Disney park... This is a plaque explaining how they got ex-Disney Imagineers to help design the ride (ohhhh, that's why...). The gift shop had a nice little museum and unique gifts. By far the best food at the park. By. Far. A final look as Goliath settles into the distance. Dinner time! Mary-Mac's is a fantastic place for great Southern cooking. Very attentive and friendly staff (our server knew all of the Bill's Superbowl failures!). Hearing it was our first time there, they gave us a free appetizer of pot lickers: turnip greens in a meat juice broth with cornbread to crumble in. I ended up having the blackened catfish with okra and tomatoes (a personal fave) and collard greens. A note-check out the ridiculous sides selection. Georgia peach cobbler closed it off.

OMNOMNOM. My mind has been fed. Thank you.

Interesting. I feel at some point, people have to realize that the USA is not actually all unicorns-and-rainbows, despite what ignorant citizens may belief. Having said that, I also feel that crazy conspiracy theories are definitely not the answer. Anyone who believes so needs to take a deep breath and truly analyze the situation. My take: The USA did the right thing in taking him out, regardless of whether he was armed or not. Taking him alive could potentially lead to much greater problems. The course the administration is taking is a very solid one, following through on US politics while minimizing the odds of additional problems. For everyone with crazy ideas and opinions, you are fully entitled to them, as am I. Please realize that the people in charge are very good at what they do, and have years of experience that we don't have as the general population. Really.

It's all part of the fun for me, but that's mostly because I force my dad onto every log flume we see, and I always convince him he won't get that wet. Generally I'm wrong .

Howdy all, For my Spring Break, and Dad and I hopped on a quick flight down to Atlanta so I could pick up my SFOG credit. We spent Thursday lolligagging around Atlanta, as no close parks were open, checking out some local grub and tacky stuff. On Friday, we went to Six Flags, and on Saturday, we drove up north to Chatanooga to Lake Winnepesukah (actually in Georgia, for some reason) for a quick day trip before flying home late that night. This update will have our escapades from Thursday, with the other updates coming later. The pics are crap, but hopefully this report will be semi-entertaining. And so we begin Wednesday afternoon, soon after taking off from Rochester International Airport... Poop. I had noticed that my ears were really painfully popping, but I had disregarded it as just an abnormal plane flight. It was abnormal all right. These babies dropped down just shortly after taking off. The best part was how no one did ANYTHING, everyone just stared at each other for about 20 seconds. Finally we strapped them on, and the pilot said he was taking us to Pittsburgh for a new plane. Thy got us a new plane and we resumed our flight at about midnight.We did got on the news, though: Source:http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2011/04/21/delta-flight-diverted-to-pittsburgh-international-airport/ Continuing on, we awoke from a brief slumber in a Buckhead Embassy Suites, in a booming part of Atlanta, after about 4 hours of sleep. The sun was shining and the air was hot and humid in a lovely way, so we set off for adventure. Barbeque, in particular. After getting lost in various sketchy parts of downtown, we finally stumbled on our destination. Daddy Dz, what every other BBQ place tries to rip off. Yummy piggy. NIce pig shrine inside. Pretty much a shack in downtown Atlanta. I don't have any food pics (sorry), but I got the pulled pork with rice and beans and green beans. Very tasty but the atmosphere was the best part. Hmmmmm.... Where could we be now? World of Coke is pretty much a hyper-sensationalized Hershey's Chocolate World that you pay $20 to have the privilege to experience. SPEAK ENGLISH DAMMIT Probably the one classy thing they had there, this is a Norman Rockwell. Want Western influence? Well by jove, you'll have it! They even have product placement! Ook Blak Boog This is a little bit of cultural overkill, even for pop art. What's this? A new Coke? They did have a nice little tongue-in-cheek exhibit of the New Coke fiasco, so I give them props. Now that's just crazy talk. At the end of the tour, they had a Club Cool at Epcot on steroids, with 60 different Coca-Cola products from around the world and a machine to mix your own combinations, which included... Yay! Ending our day, we went to a very nice Mellow Mushroom, a FANTASTIC pizza chain. I highly recommend it to everyone alive to go to one of these wonderful places. The pizza dough has a delicious pretzel flavor, and my jerk chicken hoagie just may have been the most delicious sandwich I've ever eaten. They are all over the South and even go up to Maryland. FIND ONE. UP NEXT: Six Flags Over Georgia and Lake Winnie! Thanks all!