Skycoastin Steve

I'm really taking too long to get these updates over with. Here's La Ronde. I don't have too much to say about La Ronde, other than it might be the worst park in North America. It has a beautiful setting ruined by filth, crappy employees, and slow operations. As usual, I had a great time there thanks to TPR, but I can pretty much imagine how much I would hate life if I went there on my own. The only real redeeming qualities of the park were the Batman clone, Goliath, crepes, and the fact that they sold liquor at drink stands! It's the only place I've been where you can get a Jack and Coke at a theme park, so they got an A+ from me on that one. Goliath made it above Nitro on my list of B&M hypers (even though it's shorter than 200 feet, we'll still call it a hyper), but below the rest of them (which isn't a knock on Goliath, the rest are just awesome). Overall, it's in my top 20 steel. If I remember correctly, the back had better airtime than the front, which seems to be the case for most B&M hypers. The return run in the back row was especially good, your butt hardly hits the seat! Anyway, onto the pics, please comment! Thanks for reading! Full batch of pics can be found on facebook here. As you can see, La Ronde is settled on an island in the middle of a river. We got to park in a super secret parking lot behind Le Monstre. You know you're in French Canada when...... High voltage en Francais! The cereal themed monorail. The way Six Flags themes their rides is brilliant! B&M mini-hyper. Yes. It's the credit roller coaster! It has twisty bits of airtime. Le Crap-stre. Oh Mondieu, it's all in French! This was actually a good wild mouse. What's the French word for "disgusting"? Hello Hans! Why yes, yes I am American! Oh, there's a back to your shirt.........Nope! Not nice at all! Gravy and cheese curds on fries. Odd but tasty. Like I said, full bar in a theme park. For the ultimate win! Best indoor coaster ever? You roll into a dragon's mouth and he poops you out into the station! An S&S tower that doesn't launch to the top. I gotta say, what's the point? La Ronde's "new hotness," a used SLC. It pretty much hurt just like every other SLC. Almost seems as if it was sitting in a field for five years before it came to La Ronde...... Nice ride sign, though. Vekoma corkscrew, this actually wasn't as bad as everyone thought it would be, but it was still boring. Ugh, the stand up looms over there in the corner of the park. But it's time to ride the Batman clone first! I can get artsy, even in French Canada. MISTYYYYYY, THE RIDE IS MISTYYYYY, WEEEEEEE!!!!!! This was definitely the best Batman clone I've been on, and I honestly don't even like Batman clones that much. LOOP DE LOOP! Twisty piece of track, I just thought it looked cool with the blue sky. I'm also a photography dork in case you didn't know. "Excuse me while I kick the sky!" beeeer-neeer-neer, ba-neer-neer-NEER, ber-neer-NEER!!! Crappy Canadian beer and the park flag. Is it just me or does this cobra look FABulous?? The overgrown weeds really give this ride lots of charm. If you could get inside the brains of everyone on this train, they would all be praying for a quick death rather than finish the ride. More overgrown weeds, this place should win Best Landscaping instead of BGW! At least you get a nice view of this beautiful bridge from the Flash Pass queue of Cobra. OUI! ALLONS-Y! Kinda disappointed the tower says "Pizza Pizza," and not "Le Pizza Pizza." Looking at this picture, you wouldn't think the park was gross! And there was a nice little marina behind the park. Doesn't quite stack up to the one at CP, but it's nice. Yeah why don't we just go ride that one again? Ya know, I wonder if when we keep saying "weeee!!!" on all these rides, if the French Canadians wonder why the crazy Americans keep saying "yesssss!!!" on the rides. Crepe time! Délicieux! Random art at the front gate. When your debt goes up, your score downs down, when you pay a little off it goes the other way 'round..... It's just the same for everybody, every boy and girl, the credit roller coaster makes you wanna hurl! So throw your hands in the air and wave 'em around like a wanna be frat boy tryin' to get down..... Then bring 'em right back to where your laptop's at, Log on to freecreditreport.com stat!

Untamed's station is awesome!

Good stuff! This event was never on my radar because I had too much other stuff going on (ended up in NYC for the weekend), but it looks like it was fun!

Can we add the last month of the KD thread to this thread?

This thread is completely and utterly unreadable anymore.

^Must be something in the water in Missouri.

^So........she thought that her season passes could get 10 other people in for free and would include free food for everyone as well? I feel sorry for her children, they're getting some horrible genes from her. Sheesh.

^Seems like it'll be a little chilly on Friday (58), but Saturday (65) and Sunday (71) look like it'll be perfect park going weather! Of course, it'll cool down at night, but it'll be beautiful during the day.

^In this economy, it seems to make more sense to people to do that. Nobody really has long-term development plans (outside of Zamperla), they're just trying to break even and/or make a profit if they're lucky enough. A lot can be said for park owners who do all they can to stick it out and weather the storm, but too many of them are focused in on right now rather than 5 or 10 years from now. I guess there's no guarantee the economy will get better any time soon, but as we've seen time and time again, there will naturally be another boom in the economy eventually (otherwise we'd still be in the Depression). And it's not just parks that are going through this, unfortunately it's widespread across all industries.

This was on the POV of Twister at Knoebels that was just posted on TPR's Youtube page. :facepalm:

^Yeah, the only other Eurofighter I've done is Mystery Mine, and it's light years better than Untamed. Didn't know about Corkscrew, that's kinda cool. There were small Alabama connections everywhere on this trip!

^It's not as bad as it looks. The restraints were comfortable, too!

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since my last update. To all my fanboys, my apologies! Next up is Canobie Lake Park, and I gotta say, this was my favorite park on the trip. Despite their coaster collection being rather below average, the park itself was wonderful. It had fantastic theming all over the place, TONS of shade (thank God!), a beautiful setting on a lake with clean water (thank God!), and probably the friendliest staff I've ever encountered (yes, even including Holiday World). My only real negative on the park is the coaster collection, but when it has so much else going for it, it doesn't really matter if the coasters are that great. A few thoughts on a few rides, Untamed was fairly decent. It was WAY too rough in the front, to the point where it didn't even feel like a new ride. The transitions from element to element weren't that smooth, and there was some head banging thrown in there. It seemed like the only smooth ride you could get was riding in the two middle seats in the back row. It was still a nice, compact layout with a terrific barrel roll, which was the best part of the ride apart from the first drop. Yankee Cannonball was a bit of a let down, but it was still good for an old woodie. I was expecting better airtime, but sometimes those old woodies just don't deliver the way you think they will. But no worries, it was still a fun little coaster! Canobie Corkscrew hurt, that's all I really have to say about that ride. And I'll give my thoughts on the flats in the picture captions. On to the pictures, full album is on facebook here! Comments are appreciated, thanks for reading! I was loving the entrance, it gives a nice preview to how good the park looks on the inside. For once, the outer beauty matches the inner beauty! More of the entrance. Time for ERT on the newest Eurofighter in the U.S.! As is the case with all past-vertical drops, this one delivered. The barrel roll was the best part of the ride after the first drop. Look at all those empty seats, ERT rocks! This was easily the most painful portion of the ride. Reminded me of all those Arrow inversions that test your skull's fortitude. LOOP-DE-LOOP! Odd. After experiencing an eclipse in Maine the day before, we got another one the next day in New Hampshire. Must be a New England thing. They went crazy all out with the theming for this ride, but I think it would have been better if they had live bears roaming the midway. Noted! Three-bench trains FTW. Ooohhhhhh an S&S Double Shot. Score! The pop of airtime after the first launch is quite possibly my favorite moment of airtime on any ride. Once again, the theming was amazing for this entire ride, but I think it would have been better if they had entire deer carcases hanging from the ceiling. Anybody want a bear hug? Teddy Grahams? If Canobie Lake had taken my advice and used live bears, this picture would have been a lot more interesting. MANLY POSE! Drag On Coaster: The RuPaul Ride of Fabulousness Sing it with me, "I've got the power!" Speaking of Arrow coasters that test your skull's fortitude..... I will say the airtime in our usual "Arrow" seat was fantastic on the first drop. Just everything after that f***ing hurt. I have to admit I'll be sad when the last Arrow is torn down. TPR members doing their best New Kids on the Block, they're hanging tough. oohhh ooooohhhh oooooohhhh OOOOOHHHH oh! Yeah. Artsy. Whaddaya know, there's a lake at Canobie Lake Park! I got excited for a moment when I thought the wave swinger swung out over the lake, then I saw it didn't and I was sad. True story. Apparently this is what they call water fountains in New Hampshire. My first caterpillar experience, what a silly ride. More Untamed. Another damn eclipse! I wonder how much loose change falls under this track? RAWWWRRRR!!!! NINETY-SEVEN DEGREES!!! Overlook of the layout. Loooooooooop! Ok, I promise this is the last picture of Untamed. Nice station. And now for the food stand portion of the trip report....... Any idea what they sell here? The Fried Dough stand had great airtime in the front, but lacked significant forces anywhere else. The pacing was nice, though. They sold pizza here. True story. We did a fatty spin on the log flume. We got wet. The end. Where did the boat go?!?! Others have commented on this ride, and you've seen Robb's video. It was so awesomely bad, I gave it three thumbs up. Like I said, there were lots of trees and shade in this park. Someone from SFNE should spend a day at Canobie and learn a few things. They had a nice, relaxing boat ride around the lake that showed off the ridiculously expensive homes on the water front. It basically just made me angry that I'm not rich. Best looking dorks EVAR. The park hides itself well on the shoreline, I'm guessing because the ludicrously rich people on the other side of the lake want it that way. Copyright infringement? Pretty much the greatest bumper sticker in history.

Terribly sad story. Lightning is scary stuff.

I don't believe any of your so-called true stories, and I don't believe you were on this trip.

They were stacking with two trains today. I waited almost 15 minutes when there was a one-train wait in the station. More than once, an operator didn't start checking his half of the train until the previous train was parked behind it. Even the GP were wondering what was taking them so long.

Like I said, it's silly (although I definitely understand and realize that the trims on FR are completely necessary if they didn't want to kill anyone and explode the trains into a million pieces).

Didn't S&S keep the Arrow parts division open?

Dominator has officially joined Sheikra in my list of rides that I will intentionally avoid riding because of how slow the crews are. Congratulations!

There's no room for an 80 mph launch unless they brake you immediately after the launch, which is silly.

^I'll chop my arm off if it goes 80 mph. I don't see any possible way it could go that fast. And Blitzen-Volt is one of the few names I could think of that are worse than both Verbolten AND Mach Tower.

These pictures were awful!

^Can anyone confirm that the line for Mach Tower was ever 1 1/2 hours long?

^Well technically the title is "weirdest" things the GP have said. I was strapping her in when she said that, I had to stop and compose myself because I was laughing so hard.

A good friend of mine that I worked with at Cedar Point in 2008 just posted this to facebook. It's a list of stupid things people said to us while we were working at Ripcord/Skyscraper that year, and he wrote them down throughout the year. These are all 100% real. -"So do the clouds all have to be white before you open back up?" -"Tight is good! At least that's what my husband says." While strapping in at Skyscraper -"That's the same ocean we saw in Tampa Bay last year!" -"Buy one get one free... Does that mean one person buys one and the next person gets one free?" -"How do you get to golf challenge?" -"He said there is duct tape on the cables!" -"Oh, this is our steering wheel." Referring to the foot bar -"That forward flip was cool, especially with that ocean over there!" -"Do we keep our arms locked so we don't hit the sides?" -"Excuse me, do you know where the swim-up breakfast bar is?" -"What's a wrist?" -"Skyscraper was shorter last year." Skyscraper didn't exist last year... -"There was more gravity on the last spin." -"I was wondering if you give discounts after 8:00?" -Pointing at Gemini "Wait, is that coaster a continuation of that one over there?" points at Mean Streak -"Is Skyscraper cheaper in the morning?" -"Do you guys still have Ripcord?" -"If I have a one day ticket for Cedar Point, how long do I get to stay in the park?" -"I thought we all just laid in one little blanket?" Referring to the individual flight suits -"Do babies fly for free?" -"Oh, that's for that spinner deal." -"Is there any chance we'll hit Magnum?" -"Why didn't you tell us it was going to rain?"