Skycoastin Steve

We need a fan boy-off. But there are rules. No one over the age of 15, they must either be fans of ONE coaster or ONE park and NOTHING else. They cannot even remotely like any other park or coaster that is not the one that they are obsessed with. They must give the coaster a silly, childish nickname like "Millie" or "Termy" and never refer to it by any other name. And they must also refer to the coaster as if it were an actual person. Who would win this clash of the fan boy titans?

^Yeah, but you don't see two B&M hypers at a park, or two Gerstlauer spinners, or two Intamin impulse coasters. Steel coasters are different because of how diverse they are. Another compact GCI twister in place of Colossus would just be silly. If they tear down Colossus, they sure as hell better build either a GG or Intamin woodie there, because a small GCI wouldn't exactly do the memory of Colossus any justice. And before anyone mentions it, I realize that there are parks that have multiple CCIs (HW, Indiana Beach, and Mt. Olympus immediately come to mind). However, CCI had a little more creativity and diversity than GCI (not to mention they were practically the ONLY wooden manufacturer in the country for years). I think Elissa is the one that's said it before: while GCIs are good, they aren't exactly unique from one another in very many ways.

^In fairness to Hershey, Lightning Racer is what Wildcat SHOULD have been. They didn't exactly get GCI's best effort on Wildcat. But Lightning Racer is a fantastic coaster.

Not to disagree with you, but this is happening at damn near every park in the country, not just Dorney. It's an industry-wide problem.

^What, you don't want a second wooden coaster from the same exact manufacturer at the same park? On top of that, it's a coaster designer known for its rides all being strikingly similar. That's the best idea ever! Why didn't Shapiro think of that???

Really dude? You're 13. You probably haven't even remotely had enough basis built for your own opinion on the park other than what other people have said, and not only that, you're going to call them names for trying to create favorable results for one of their rides? It's called creating excitement. Maybe if any Six Flags on the face of the Earth were capable of that, their properties wouldn't be dropping faster than the Dow Jones.

While I haven't ridden Tatsu, I highly doubt a B&M flyer beats MF.

^It operated another 4 years before being closed after the 2003 season.

For the sake of the Bash, I REALLY hope they don't fall behind on those.

^Well said. My favorite phrase to introduce to new employees at the parks I've worked at is "physics always wins." Physics is undoubtedly the undefeated, untied champion. Don't wanna mess with it.

Gotcha. Wasn't exactly sure how the braking system was on there. I guess the problem with the LSMs being the brakes is if they lose power, the situation of it rolling through to the emergency brakes happens. With rides like Dragster or Kingda Ka, power failure would never make a difference. They act as brakes when there is no power. As you mentioned though, the reason there is rollbacks is because the ride doesn't know how much extra stopping power to apply when the drive trips/loses power/etc. There's always a magnetic field, but it needs the extra power to slow it down properly. Alright then that makes sense. I was a little foreign to the way the brakes were on that ride, thanks for explaining!

Gotcha. Wasn't exactly sure how the braking system was on there. I guess the problem with the LSMs being the brakes is if they lose power, the situation of it rolling through to the emergency brakes happens. With rides like Dragster or Kingda Ka, power failure would never make a difference.

It seems as if the problem with the brakes could easily be solved by retrofitting them with fixed magnetic brakes that practically every new Intamin has now. They're fail safe and slow the ride down smoothly and quietly. Now whether or not this is practical I don't know, because the trains obviously would need modifications to accommodate the new brakes. If they're serious about keeping this ride around, wouldn't be a bad idea if it was indeed plausible.

^Because Dick Kinzel is evil. Probably had something to do with trash cans, high prices, and Geauga Lake.

Well at least the supports aren't red/yellow/both!

Don't forget the Blue Flash!

Voted for hyyyyper, themeparkman25, and smallish. Hyyyper's probably got the hardest laugh out of me, but I laughed out loud at several of these. Well done!

^A next generation Enterprise?

Yeah blobs have been around for years. When I was a senior in high school (2003), we had an end of the year party at this nearby camp that had one of those on a lake. A good friend of mine's girlfriend, who weighed barely over 100 pounds and was not even 5 feet tall, was on the end when I jumped (I'm 6'5 and weighed about 215 at the time). I launched her a good 20 feet in the air and she came down on her side and had massive bruising on her ribs. My friend literally hated my guts for a very long time because of that. I always thought it was a silly reason to hate someone, it wasn't my fault because she asked me to launch her!

This software is identical to the software used on another forum of which I'm a member. I like it a lot.

^In the case of the Superman tower slicing off the girl's feet, it was the idiotically moronic maintenance department's fault for not taking care of the ride cables. It had zero, nada, zip, zilch, nothing to do with the ride or Intamin. Maintenance let a cable that was rusted through go to the point where it snapped, and used corn starch as a "de-lubricant" instead of lubricating the cables to reduce friction, which made the problem exponentially worse. Then the operator did not hit the E-stop like she was supposed to when she noticed the snapped cables. She was 16 and had been improperly trained. That accident was 110% the fault of Kentucky Kingdom, and nothing and no one else had anything to do with it. Several similar Intamin drop rides operate all over the world and not a single one has ever cut feet off in the same manner. It was an isolated incident.

I've only visited the area once when I hit King's Island, HW, SFKK, and Stricker's Grove in the same weekend but I'd recommend checking out the Roller Coaster Database as there is a feature on there where you can see parks and the distance in between. Make sure you seach for existing parks. I did KI to HW in about three hours with no stops. Beech Bend also isn't very far away. Did both BB and SFKK in one day last year with plenty of time to spare. I believe they were about an hour and a half apart.