KBrylczyk

That'd be awesome. What would suck is being stuck right next to that goddamn lightning strike if it keeps going. I'd jump every time.

^ Someone posted their POVs and thoughts a little while ago. I think it was at a German fair. The idea is cool and all but it's basically a suspended coaster that isn't actually suspended, you know?

I mean, in this business, when that's the only complaint people can muster that means you've conquered all. Congrats, RMC. You're the power to bring all of us morons together in circle-jerkdom. Edit - Also I totally agree. Their restraints are kinda insane to push up.

^ I glanced at their twitter and didn't see anything like a clue, but I only went back a day or two. Oh, well, it'll be clear tomorrow.

Sooooo, I'm a bit out of the loop. What is leading everyone to believe this will be a tower ride?

Oh, yeah, because everyone I talk to about Cedar Point makes sure to say how excited they are to ride Mean Streak. Very true. In this case, "Mean Streak gets the axe." OK, let's break it down - 1- Mean. This could mean anything. Get it? MEAN?! MEAN ANYTHING! HA! I'm hilarious. 2 -Streak. Streak of lightning, winning streak, going streaking through the park AH HA!!! I GOT IT! Cedar Point is hosting a Naked Marathon event next year! 3 - Gets. Someone's getting something. 4 - The. Yeah I got nothing. 5 - Axe. Hmmmm, an axe. A cutting tool. Also known as a hatchet. Hatchets are used by Native Americans. Native Americans were named things like Geronimo. Geronimo is something people say when they jump off of things. People jump off of things to have fun or when they get too depressed. People get too depressed when they listen to Insane Clown Posse. Insane Clown Posse uses a hatchet as their symbol. HOLY CRAP GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!! Cedar Point is going to build a first of it's kind RMC T-Rex with a drop track section that will be so forceful your clothes will be removed and you'll be forced to streak through the park to the gift shop to buy a whole new outfit!

Sandusky should really think about improving their infrastructure at this point, haha. Oh, also major park news tomorrow morning?!

Personally I like the bicycle seat ever so gracefully caressing my junk. The vibrations end up tickling the happy place rather than bashing to a pulp.

^ Yeah, I mean Disneyland just had their 60th and the big deal was some fireworks. Granted they're cool fireworks but still just fireworks.

^ Fair warning, bud, about timing. I grew up 10 miles from the park and had relatives in Boston that we visited at least once a year. That drive is 5 hours on a good day. Luckily you won't run into the hell that is NYC traffic on a weekday but it still won't be a walk in the park. You may want to think about driving down on Saturday evening and grabbing a hotel.

I'm so pissed that I'll miss this park by ONE FRIGGIN' DAY! My cross-country move will send me right by Louisville on August 10th or 11th. They cease daily operations on the 9th. Not fair, Kentucky Kingdom. Not fair at all.

^ Pretttttttty sure that's the sound Hulk makes when he's bang-I mean, hanging with She-Hulk, if you catch my drift.

^ Don't forget Great Adventure putting the top half of Scream Machine's loops in the Monkey area of the safari when they retracked the tops of the loops to the reinforced track.

If there's a just and loving god, they will.

Might wanna see a doctor, brosef. That ain't healthy.

^ The World's First Ex-Launched Wooden Coaster! Updated with an ALL NEW groundbreaking chain-lift system!

^ Agreed. Wildcat is excellent. Good ol' rough and tumble woodie that lets you know who's in charge. My only complaint is that there's no shortcut into the station because that queue is long and empty.

Everyone here ready for the huge surprise park of the trip? Of course you are! Journey with me to the magical wonderland of homegrown awesome that is... HANSA PARK! Let's get something clear. This is another park that I was pretty well in the dark about except for two rides. Fluch Von Novgorod and Karnan, the park's two largest coasters, were the only thing I'd ever paid attention to. The rest of the park wasn't even on my radar. Not because it didn't look fun, it's just that all of my attention got pulled to the Gerstlauer funkiness. Can you blame me? Lucky for me, this park is like a German Knoebels (with way more themeing)! It used to be a Legoland and now it's a family-owned park full of excellent, unique rides and alcoholic crepes. Speaking of the alcoholic crepes, I ordered a Gran Marnier crepe expecting a flavored syrup. Nope, she just poured a lot of liquor directly on the crepe with some sugar and folded it. If that isn't enough to sell you on a visit to this park I don't know if you can be helped. While we're on the subject of food, let's also talk about pretzels. See, Hansa has this amazing pretzel bar by the front of the park where they bake all kinds of delicious German pretzels fresh and sell them to you straight out of the oven. They're cheap, they're fresh, they're the tastiest pretzel you'll find, and like I said they come in all varieties. You can get plain, you can get spinach and tomato, you can get one covered with a pound of cheese, you can get one covered in two pounds of cheese, you can get one covered in five pounds of cheese with tomato and cocaine. I may be lying about one of those. Doesn't matter because you'll want to try them all anyway. It's kinda like Pokemon (gotta catch 'em all) but you eat the Pokemon in this case. I hear Pikachu is delicious. I've also seen some weird Pokemon porn where Pikachu was...well, you get the picture. Again, stop judging me. Look at your own internet history before throwing stones. Still on the food topic? Sure, why not? Lunch at this park was an accident waiting to happen. For some reason the park felt it would be great if this group of foreigners lit their own fires and grilled their own various meats and potatoes. Luckily we escaped with minimal injuries but I'm sure the amount of chemicals we inhaled while attempting to light the fires will come back to haunt us like a coal miner's black lung. Oh, well, if I'm going out I'm going out having delicious dead animals in my mouth. Take that out of context, huh? The food was delicious as we were given bratwursts, sausages, turkey skewers, a thousand baked potatoes, potato salad, coleslaw, and maybe other things. I'm not sure exactly, I just know the park gave us an incredible amount of food and enough baked potatoes to make Idaho jealous. Alright, enough about the excellent munchies options at this park, let's get to the reason you're all really here, the rides! Let's start with the best - SPACE RACE!!!!! - Space Race, y'all! Take bumper cars that have serious power behind them, put them indoors with blacklights, strobes, and disco lights, add a soundtrack and laser guns, and you have Space Race. Definitely one of the top bumper car attractions I've done and they're made even better by the random people screaming obscenities in German. 10/10 would pew pew Germans again. Karnan - Or Schwur Des Karnan if you go by the guidebooks. This ride, I don't know what to tell you guys. It's big, it's intimidating, it's fast, but it just didn't live up to the hype. I found it boring and forceless. PSYCHE! HOLY FLIPPING CRAP BALLS FROM HELL THIS BEAST IS THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY INSANE RIDE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, it's THAT good. I won't spoil any of the surprises that happen inside the building, of course, just know that this ride was created by some sick people who really know how to innovate and scare the piss out of people. As for the exterior portion? Oh lawd sweet jesus, I didn't know forces like this were possible. I got extreme, murderous airtime EVERYWHERE! Not just over hills, I got airtime in twists, in overbanks, at the base of drops, at the downhill sections, at the uphill sections, on the brakes, after the brakes, in the turns, FRIGGIN EVERYWHERE, PEOPLE! THIS. RIDE. BREAKS. PHYSICS. How? I don't know. It just does. Gerstlauer is full of wizards who create their own gravitational laws. I cannot say enough good things about this ride. It is a psychotic machine that should not exist in this world. This is like the Captain Planet of rollercoasters. Take the best parts of Intamin, RMC, Mack, B&M (Twisty, airtime, innovation, height) and with those powers combined IT IS KARNAN! I said godDAMN this ride is incredible. The most intense coaster I've ever ridden. Fluch Von Novgorod - Aside from Mystery Mine this is the best themed Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter on the planet. The queue line is creepy with a few interactive touches, the ride is a mix between a dark ride, an opera performance, and a coaster, and the exit is a fun house complete with a slide and a maze. The surprise launch has one hell of a kick to it and the outdoor portion is a fast and furious twisty ride only to be followed by another quick indoor portion that's pitch black. Loved it, just be prepared to brace against the Gerstlauer shudder. Crazy Mine - Wild mouse with no brakes until the end. Well themed but painful. Nessie - Classic Schwarzkopf goodness with one hell of a view! Being so close to the Baltic Sea provides wonderful views on the lift and long turnaround before the first drop. There's some nice airtime in places, too. Someone made the bad decision of putting the brake run indoors and anyone who's ridden a Schwarzkopf knows how loud those brakes are. Imagine that sound enclosed and echoed. Rasender Roland - The longest Rollerskater I've ever been on. It's a very fun family ride that passes through Nessie's loop twice and has good laterals. It even goes over a pond! Schlange Von Midgaard - The best themed kiddy coaster you'll ever see. Nothing thrilling at all but it's almost entirely over the water, has some cool effets, and you go under a waterfall. Nothing wrong with that! Rio Dorado - Spinning raft ride where you don't get wet until the fountain squirters at the end. I've been on these before and really enjoy them! They spin like there's no tomorrow and this one is at least twice as long as the standard model. Tons and tons of spinning! Spanische Glocke - AKA Bell: The Ride. The only thing this ride has going against it is the atrocious capacity. Six riders per cycle. I'm not joking. The ride itself is essentially a Frisbee that has fountains and fire and it's a huge amount of fun, the only problem is that it's so low capacity so this style will never be seen anywhere else ever. Who designs a ride to hold only six people at once?! It's madness, I tell you! Wildwasserfahrt - Probably the wettest log flume of the trip. It looks so nice from the outside but holy crap it'll drench you! Lots of fun and it's a decent length, just watch out for that final splash because it's mean! Let's get to the photos! Not many today, I was too busy riding Karnan a thousand times and my brain melted from the intensity.

Everyones opinion will be different but I really like what Mystic Manor and Grizzly brought to the park although I really wish HKDL had a Splash Mountain or their own water ride since it's stupidly hot whenever we've been. I'd probably now put it ahead of the main Paris Disney by a little bit (although last time I was there was before Disney Dreams) although I do really like Paris's PoTC... so it's pretty close, both have tourists that drive them down a little for me though. My wife actually wants HKDL to be our son's first. She admits the others are a lot better,especially Tokyo, but as a non-enthusiast HKDL is her favorite. She just finds it a lot quieter than the others (maybe we've just been lucky with our visits) and thinks a park where you can meet the majority of the characters and princesses within 5 minutes or have most lines under 20 mins (give or take an Autopia/Parachutes) makes it ideal as a starter Disney so it has that I guess. I wasn't speaking to the quality of the parks, just in hard attendance numbers. I've not been to HKDL but I would love to visit as I'm sure it's incredible.

Ha, so Magic Mountain is right next to the fire and has clear skies. Meanwhile here in Vegas it looks like friggin Beijing with the amount of dust and smoke from that fire being carried here in the wind.

^ Ha, totally forgot that park existed. OK, DCA is third-worst behind that and Hong Kong.

^ I hear Stinger is being torn to scrap and being replaced with a Megalite.

The reason they ditched the California-centric theme was because the park was failing miserably in reviews and reputation. Hell, it's STILL only pulling half of the number of visitors than Disneyland. They're adding these new attractions that have huge audience recognition to sell tickets. Disney couldn't care less that the original (failed) idea for the park is dead. Sheesh, Disney fanboys always harping on about how it's a travesty things are changing. Well, guess what? They're changing FOR THE BETTER in every case! Cars Land? It's incredible. Soarin' Over The World? I hate the ride system but the new video is a massive improvement over the original. Ariel's Undersea Adventure? Fantastic classic-style Disney dark ride! Monster's Inc? Nothing particularly special but literally anything is better than Superstar Limo. Quit whining about how Walt would be spinning in his grave and just be happy they're coming up with ways to save the second-worst Disney park in the chain (in attendance numbers). Edit - Forgot Disney Studios existed in Paris. DCA is the third-worst performer behind it and Hong Kong.

^ Indoor Crazy Couch. Best ride ever.