KBrylczyk

^ Why would you want to be at the park at 8am when they don't open the gates until 10:30? Hell, none of the rides will even be open until noon.

Well, I'm not going to Terra Mitica anytime soon. Between the modified restraints and the waterpark incident they can go to hell.

^ Some say it continues even now...

You left out one key ingredient - - 1,000 metric f&%#tons of sugar I've had the Butterbeer once and felt like I was gonna die afterward. It didn't taste bad, but I'm pretty sure I went full Wilford Brimley "diabeetus" for the afternoon, and I don't have diabetes.

^ Well alrighty then!

^^ What surprised me was the fact that they took so long to get the initial drop going. Bellatrix is zapping at you and it seems like the action stops while the track tilts and aligns and THEN send you on your way. Since they installed the motion base you'd think they'd have made it so the car can stay upright while the track tilts, that was when she starts attacking it can have been waiting to drop you already. Then again it could just be that since the camera turned to face the track as it's tilting I don't even realize there's still stuff happening on the screen. Can anyone clarify if there's a pause there? I'd also like to note that it looks like they realized their huge errors with Forbidden Journey. It's an actual story this time, much more accessible a la Spidey or Transformers. Also the integration between screens and sets! Forbidden Journey's integration was horrible as you could see the zipper effect happen each time, as well as the speed / 2D and 3D issue. "Oh, I'm flying at 60 miles an hour on a broom being chased by a dragon in 2D oh crap wait we're crawling now but the now 3D dragon is still trying to murder us....wait."

Alright, I'm torn on this place. I enjoyed the day enough, but it needs to change course very soon before it becomes worse. Operations are a joke. I know that nothing here is built to be particularly high capacity, but even with that in mind there were maybe two rides in the entire park that were being run with a decent crew (Dragon and AquaZone). I actually witnessed the operator of Bionicle Blaster allow line jumping! She had let in the guests from the queue and was about to start walking the ride to check that the doors were locked. A woman and child were yelling to her from the exit. Some wild, angry gestures were made by the guest, the ride op actually walked around to the handicap gate, opened it, and let them into the ride, completely bypassing the 4-cycle wait. On the shooting gallery dark ride they effectively HALVED capacity! The ride vehicles seat 4 people. Rather than making groups of two ride together they separate them to their own cars. There were four groups of two in front of the girlfriend and I. They each got their own car. They didn't ask for their own car, the operators just did it that way. I can only assume they had been doing it before we got there and continued well after we exited. I get that sorting large crowds can get hectic on larger rides (like Great Movie Ride), but when your capacity is four and you can't be bothered to tell people to sit in row 2, I hate you. We noticed similar grouping on Technic Test Track, too. Don't even get me started on the dolts in charge of Knight's Tournament. I kept a count. There were cycle times ranging from two minutes to, wait for it...TEN MINUTES! FOR SIX FRIGGING SEATS! Yeah, six. Half of it was closed for most of the day. In July. Aside from the Six Flags level of operations, there is one other complaint I have. Cleanliness. The park looked like it hadn't been cleaned in over a year. I'm not talking about trash on the ground (of which there was plenty). I'm talking about the general dirtiness of pretty much every ride and building. Cobwebs, dirt, chipped paint, mold, etc were everywhere. All they need is to go through the park with a powerwasher and a few paint buckets! Don't get me wrong. The landscaping is great! The amount and variety of plant life is excellent. It's just unfortunate that everything aside from the plant life looked like it hadn't been given any TLC in years. Did they just cancel their maintenance and upkeep budget to build the Chima waterpark or something? The entire day (9am to 8pm) we saw ONE employee sweeping up. One. Oh, also, just look at the photo below of the loading area for the fairy tale river. Serious, serious safety issue there. I explained in the description. Alright, now onto the positives - The themeing is definitely well done. I wasn't expecting Disney or Universal levels, of course, but it was certainly above average. The little touches all over the place were fun to keep an eye out for. Miniland USA had a ton of jokes hidden in it that must go unseen by a lot of people, and I'm sure I missed a bunch myself! Speaking of the themeing, the rocks that were a rock group over by the Duplo area were AWESOME! The soft serve ice cream with flavor burst is always welcome. I hadn't had any in years since I first saw it on the boardwalk in Jersey and it was just as good as I remember it! I recommend the Tropical Orange. Food prices were shockingly reasonable. We got lunch at Wok & Bowl for $9.95 each! Any other park you'd be paying at least $17 for what we got. The ice cream I mentioned was under $4, in a good sized waffle cone, not one of those tiny sugar cones. The only thing that seemed overpriced were the apple fries which, while good, weren't worth $6. They weren't playing Everything Is Awesome on loop all day, which was a legitimate concern. Great song but I'd start punching children if I had to hear it on loop all day. We did have a fun day. There were frustrations that were completely unexpected, especially after all of the great things I had heard about Legolands, but they weren't enough to ruin the day. They did, however, seriously impact our decision to return anytime soon. Thankfully I was able to find a 40% off coupon for admission. Had I paid full price (over $80) I would have been a bit more irked by everything. From where I'm sitting, it seems the park was once a great place but has unfortunately fallen into a middle-of-the-road experience. It has potential, it just needs the people in charge to wake up and fix the problems. If they can clean the place up, fix the operations issues, and give it some new paint it would be much, much better. That's probably the most frustrating part of it all, too. I know that it can be excellent but it seems those in charge have just stopped caring. It's a shame. Anyways, on with the pictures and vines - Aquazone! [vine] [/vine] Obi-Wan is teaching ballet to Anakin. [vine] [/vine] Speeder bike! [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQmhBd2engH[/vine] AT-ST gettin' whooped. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQmhuUT3bbe[/vine] I'm driving a boat. This log flume is maybe 10 feet tall and still managed to soak us more than Journey To Atlantis or Splash Mountain. Chewy! Hehe, stupid owl. Mickey must have been eaten by the dragon. Heh, lego bricks built old temples. Alright, this is just pathetic. They're missing the handrails but they still have the bottom where it would anchor to. While waiting in line I witnessed no less than three children trip on this and faceplant onto the metal floor and proceed to scream in pain. The ride ops didn't seem to care whenever it happened, either. Why is this even allowed to operate with this safety hazard? The Lego Movie Experience was nice to see. It was pretty nuts just how detailed the set was! SPACESHIP! Anyone else think Darth Maul looks like a Canadian from South Park? Hoth has apparently gained the ability to grow plant life!

Vine and photo dump time! Quick report first, though - The park was quite crowded. Luckily with SeaWorld rides are not the focus. The shows are. Throughout the day they were turning people away from the arenas because there were simply no more seats available. We missed the midday Sea Lions Live show when we were 10 minutes early. Blue Horizons we were part of the last 10 people to scoot through the gate before they cut it off. Pretty nuts, haha. What's awesome, though? NO LINES! Seriously! The place was a madhouse and both Manta and Journey To Atlantis had 5-10 minute waits all day long. The operations staff is incredible here. Wild Arctic had about a half hour wait but there's not much than can be done with that ride for crowds. We opted to skip the simulator and just walk to the animals. It was a great and long day at the park. We arrived around 10am and stuck around all day through the fireworks. Speaking of the fireworks, they're just right for the event. They do the 25-minute Shamu's Nighttime Spectacular and the fireworks begin almost immediately after. They tell everyone in the stadium to hang out for the fireworks, too, so it's not a ton of people trying to exit while also staring at the sky. They're only about 5 minutes long, but like I said, it's perfect for the event. Just a nice button on the end of the day! Onto the fun stuff - I found this weird bubbling / gurgling vent by Manta. It spit water up at me, too. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MxYbqVd0BP7[/vine] Manta! [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQB3tDOBHUt[/vine] Flamingos being flamingos. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBLBJxtOpK[/vine] Manta annoying the flamingos. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBLKmOv5lq[/vine] Cirque De La Mer's trampoline stuff. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBLig9rWY1[/vine] Seals being awesome. [vine] [/vine] Sharks. Yup. [vine] [/vine] More sharks. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBLEJg3dah[/vine] Journey To Atlantis being all splashy. [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBlubAKJFH[/vine] SKLOOSH! [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBlKjp6pxO[/vine] Skidoosh! [vine]https://vine.co/v/MQBlMaWnFrw[/vine] One more splash, because splashes are awesome. [vine] [/vine] Purty new entrance Turtle! Turtles! The sky tower is tiny compared to palm trees. No wonder it broke. Dinky little thing. Manta looking awesome. Flamingos n' coasters. Absolutely packed Shamu Stadium. We were in the second to last row and we arrived 20 minutes early. Orca flip! Awwwww, they're presenting themselves! SPIT ON THE CHILDREN!!!! Spinny spin! Tail splash. Manta, if you couldn't guess. Sea lions were being super lazy. Feeding time for the seals. Sploosh Polar bear butt! This is Lumpy the Walrus. Zoooooom We had much better seats for the nighttime show.

^ Fair enough. A geological epoch is different than an epoch, though, as it needs to be specifically cited as a geological epoch. But now we're just getting into semantics and that's boring. Moving right along!

It's a pun, buddy. In what way is that a pun? "The Romans only gathered once a week. That was enough forum." That's a pun.

That looks pretty awesome. My one gripe is whoever posted those videos should really learn the difference between Epoch and Epic.

From what I'm seeing there are two camps for this ride - A - Those who have ridden and are quite disappointed by it. B - Those who haven't ridden because of the horribly slow, Magic Mountain-level operations, and are pissed off. Sounds like a winner! Good ol' country engineering!

^

Good luck getting the X-Men licensing rights from Disney.

[youtu_be] [/youtu_be]

Heading to SeaWorld tomorrow! Actually tonight, really. Once the significant other is done with work we're driving the 4-1/2 hours to San Diego to avoid the LA traffic in the morning. Three new shows since we last visited earlier this year! Fireworks, Shamu's nighttime show, and Cirque De La Mer (was closed for the winter the last two times). There's also the evening Sea Lions Live show that I believe is different from the usual daytime show, so that'll be fun! Oh, also yay for Manta (seriously, airtime machine) and Journey To Atlantis! Ah, screw it. Yay for the cheesiness of Wild Arctic, too! Edit - Oh yeah! And the new entrance will be 100% open, too! Last visit they only had two touch pools available as part of the soft opening, along with the massive gift shop.

I'll be heading to Legoland on Tuesday. First time ever at a Legoland park, so I'm not sure what to expect aside from a lot of awesome models and screaming children. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures and vines, though! Aqua Racer, here I come!

Looking pretty funky. Though I can tell you right now that the submarine attraction is going to be a completely boring waste of time after having ridden U-571 at Movieland Studios.

'MURICA! We're so fat we can't even walk up stairs without safety features! WHOOOOOO!!!!

Stay away from the darker corners of the internet, my friend. Gotta be the Samurai. They're hiding in forests trying to kill Ninjas.

^ i'm so happy you're not a designer. You don't seem to have a whole lot of fresh, creative ideas about working around an obstacle. You'd do well with B&M, actually.

^ The do have a culture that revolves around tentacle porn and used panties, soooooooo yeah... Still an awesome place if you don't focus on that, though!

Seriously, man? You're one page late.

Looks excellent! Between this and Rainbow Magicland, Rome has some heavy hitters in the themeing department!

'MURICA! I'm curious about the Splash Mountain suit mentioned. "I got wet!" "Well, sir, that's the idea."