KBrylczyk

But Universal harshly imprisons dragons, hippogriffs, aliens, dinosaurs, and all kinds of other animals for entertainment purposes! Shame on them!

HOLY CRAP! I drove by it again last week on my way to LA and it was the first time I had noticed it. It looked to me like an abandoned hotel resort-ish place where the cheesiness factor was through the roof. I never would have guessed it was once a waterpark, haha.

Inverted family coaster? That's so nice they bought an OzIris clone!

With these new tweaks I'm gonna jump onto the Option 1 bandwagon. The gray background REALLY helps guide the eyes around the page. It's the same layout as before but it looks a lot less messy and cluttered now.

I'm not so sure. Granted, I have yet to visit Wet N' Wild (due mainly to crowds and lack of shade) but from what I've seen from both parks they seem to be the same in terms of ride types offered and amount of attractions. Wet N' Wild - http://wetnwildlasvegas.com/Park-Info/Interactive-Map.htm Cowabunga Bay -http://shanehuish.wix.com/las-vegas#!untitled/c23os

Again, USH is a studio first, theme park second. The expansion of Harry Potter is happening on land that was once used as a non-studio space (the Gibson theatre). They won't move into their open space because they use all of the available room for filming. Yeah, they have the land but they chose to dedicate it to the more lucrative business. Filming multiple movies from multiple studios (they rent to Disney, Warner, Paramount, Fox, etc) is MUCH more profitable than building a new ride or two.

I don't know about you, but MY reproductive system is quite reactive to different feelings.

Sooooooo, yeah. Kraken? That's a good one. Them old school B&Ms, man. They'll get ya! Yup... I'll just go sit over here now...

It depends. I went through it in June and it was pretty terrible. There were maybe three actors throughout and it was exceedingly dark. It had a more touch-tunnel vibe than haunted house. The Frankenstein's Laboratory set was awesome, though. Then I went through again later last year. No HHN overlay or anything, just the regular house. They wisened up. It now has certain hours of operation throughout the day. Rather than having it open the whole time with actors taking breaks, they open it for 1-1.5 hour intervals with every actor inside, then they get (I believe) 45 minutes off where the house is closed. It cycles open and closed all day long. It was AWESOME. Still not the best out there, but WAY better than the first time. There were actors in almost every room and it was brighter so you could actually see the rooms you were in. The hiding spots are all over the place and the actors tend to move from one to the other as each group comes through so you'll never know where they're coming from if you go through multiple times. I really enjoyed it. I just hope they've kept that operational model going.

I did not know that! Seeing an IMAX movie there with the park and Citywalk there and getting $2 parking sounds pretty good to me. Or just pay the $2 parking and buy a matinee ticket for a movie you don't intend to see, spend the day at the park. Total cost would be around $10, yeah? Take that, math.

Speak for yourself. I'm fully prepared for when Skynet and/or zombies take over the world thanks to Hollywood.

I'm with Dan on this. Option 2 is better because of the cleanliness of it. The Twitter bar throws the entire layout off-kilter. Perhaps if you combined the TPR Updates bar with the Park News, Etc bar and put the Twitter feed opposite it would look much better.

^ Of all the "conveniences" they could have listed were unavailable, they chose mail.

Er, how much steeper do you want it? Looks plenty steep to me. Twin Peaks in Italy is (due to the PTSD caused by it) near-vertical in my mind. Granted, in reality it is probably closer to a 60-degree drop. They still haven't released the angle of Verruckt's drop and in the promos the camera is always in some strange orientation to throw off your perception. In the video it didn't look nearly as bad as Twin Peaks coming over the top, though.

Nice video, but I'm disappointed in how the drop looks. The concept art made it out to be so much steeper. That doesn't look too bad at all. Still, it looks like fun and I'd love to give it a shot someday.

^ Same deal with Puerto Rico. Keep in mind the reason tourists already go to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Orlando wasn't a tourist destination until Disney World opened. Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, etc are what bring the tourism into that town. Puerto Rico and Hawaii are already tourist destinations for entirely different reasons. A theme park sounds like a good idea to us, sure, but economically it would be a nightmare. Well, at least in Hawaii we could build a literal Volcano: The Blast Coaster.

^ I'm guessing it's due to the clientele. There's tons of cruise ship guests all the time but they're rarely in port long enough for anyone to justify a trip to an amusement park. They'd rather see the sights in the immediate area and then settle down at some overpriced bar and get sloshed. As for the island residents, demand isn't high enough for anyone to take the financial risk of building one. I see a park there going the way of Hard Rock in Myrtle Beach.

Chiming in again simply to reiterate how ecstatic I am that I quit working for Carnival just about one year ago. I'd like to say there were some aspects of the company that were good, but there really aren't.

^ Because of Orlando and Tampa. Sure, they're 4 hours away, but it is home to the three heaviest hitters in the industry. A standalone park or even a Six Flags hellhole wouldn't stand a chance up against that competition. That's like having the Lakers play some upper-class blue ribbon high school basketball team. It's cute that you let them try, but everyone knows it's going to be an embarassment.

^ I sure as hell would! Throw on some speed metal and let that thing take me on a trip to the nuthouse!

^^ Not for me. Sober as a bird until Scandi 2014, haha. Though I have had a LOT of coffee today (had to be at work at 6am this morning) so that might be the culprit...

Phoenix needs a pulse before an amusement park. Read my SeaWorld San Diego TR and you'll see why.

Sooooooo what exactly is so special about this? We have a few indoor water parks already... Edit - I no reed gud.

^ I put a toll booth on both ends of the sidewalk on my property. Just kidding. I live in an apartment. I pay them to walk on my own sidewalks.

^ I maintain the best part is watching Steven Tyler play with the small model like he's playing Hot Wheels or something.