willski

Well, that doesn't even matter, as I was staying on property, so I got in at 9.....

^So MAXX passholders were let in at 8:30 or 9:30? Either way, I went through the front gate. It already happened...I think it's the better way to go if you want to ride Raptor and MF first.

^Or, you didn't stay on property, but instead were cheap and stayed at Breaker's Express and couldn't go to the Soak City gate because: A. They told you you had to park main lot, despite what you had heard B. MAXX passes don't electronically scan Cedar Fair parks, only ex-Paramount ones. C. The only place to get your MAXX pass "scanned" is at guest relations at the front gate. Oh yeah, and you get to ride Raptor too. Besides, by going in the front gate, you get to ride other rides on your way to Maverick, instead of getting to Maverick first to find it shut down and then going to other rides that now have a longer wait. Front gate works well, as would the Marina gate. Really, that is probably the best gate to do this from. Assuming you don't want to ride Raptor and you save MF for last, you could go in the Soak City gate and do TTD, Maverick, and then MF.

Hey, just like a scholarship, but considerably better (it doesn't go to textbook money either).

You can, but it takes some running. Get to the park at 8:45 and be in the very front of the ERT line (they may let you in around 8:55). Run to Raptor, ride it in the front, then run to MF. When I was there, the line was a walk-on in most rows the first time on MF (around 9:10). Ride MF, get off and ride MF again. The second time around, the line will be just outside the station and you can grab a quick back seat ride. If you want to ride in the front, just ride it once. The best seat on MF is the front, but the second row gives you a similar effect for much less wait. My vote is for the first ride in the second row and the second ride in the back row, but you can do whatever. Next, run to Maverick. If it didn't break down at first, the line will only be about halfway to 2/3s through the covered portion, which is only a 15-20 minute wait (if the crew is hitting the intervals really well, as they were on the days of my visit). Ride once in the front (maybe a three/four train wait instead of one or two). This is where it got close for me. Run to Dragster and hope that they didn't open the park early to not resort guests. One morning they opened it at around 9:55 and the other right at 10. It made the difference between a 10-15 minutes wait for the front on TTD and a 40-50 minute wait for the front on TTD. It's possible, I've done it, but it is really hard. Also, you should probably formulate a plan after TTD, because I ran out of ideas at that point and wandered around (read: "rode Mean Streak") for about an hour. I ended up waiting in huge lines for Mantis and Magnum because of my lack of planning after TTD. They have 4 hotels (Breakers, Breakers Express, Sandcastle Suites, Castaway Bay), a camping area, and cottages/cabins. You can make reservations pretty late at CP. We visited on a Wednesday and Thursday in June, so we needed a hotel on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I booked the Saturday before (3 days before) with no problems at all. Of course, if you're planning on going during a peak time (weekend or 4th of July), you'd probably want to make reservations sooner than that.

Ummm....they could be controlled if they were your standard, pneumatic-air piston operated friction trims. However, they're not. The trims on EGF are magnetic eddy current brakes on a fixed, unmoveable bracket. The braking power of these trims cannot be increased and decreased. To take the trims off, you'd literally have to unbolt the brackets and take them off the ride. See this picture: http://rcdb.com/ig977.htm?picture=51 No pneumatic lines or any electrical wires at all. They are essentially install and forget magnets. All you have to do is make sure they are bolted in and properly maintained.

Yeah, seriously, good luck getting the stuff you want to ride done in one day. MF will be an hour+ at least, as will Dragster and Maverick. Mantis and Raptor will get to around an hour as well (and those predictions are based ona a weekday in June visit). Basically, take those times and make them longer and there you go. Have fun....

Haha, I'm really not sure how we got on that topic, but the only reason I know is because my uncle is a huge DeLorean fan-he owns 2-3 in various stages of completion. A waste of money if you ask me. Anyway, spare coaster parts.....

^Wow, that's impressive. We're tied. SFoG Carowinds SFoG BGT IoA USF HW PKI GL CP CP MiA Dollywood SFoG Wild Adventures SFoG 12 parks, 16 visits.

^Actually, you can get parts for DeLoreans pretty easily. They made sure to have plenty of replacements for their customers before they declared bankruptcy. As for coaster parts, wheels are made by independent companies. Basically, maunfacturers go to them for the wheels and do ont make them in house. Therefore, wheels are easy to come by. Also, manufacturers make sure that they have plenty essential parts like OTSRs, chain dogs, etc. When Schwarzkopf went bankrupt, they sold all of their replacement parts for their rides (quite a large amount) to a holding company, which later became Schwarzkopf (this time run by Anton's son Wieland). The "new" Schwarzkopf mostly just supplies parts for existing Schwarzkopf coasters, although they came up with a new train design a few years ago that no one ended up purchasing. If a park still can't find a part in surplus stockpiles or fromanother park, they can either manufacture it in-house or contract it out to companies. As pointed out earlier by Katie, Kennywood is one of the best examples of this, as they have a lot of unique, older rides that have either outlasted maunfacturer surplus parts or require a part that just can't be found.

I didn't go inside the water park on my visit to Holiday World (mostly because the slide lines were 30+ minutes and Voyage was a walk-on, resulting in 30 rides), but I did notice from Voyage's lift hill and from various spots around the park that there is no foliage whatsoever. For a fairly pretty park that has all 3 major coasters in the woods to some degree, the water park is a hideous concrete eyesore. I know the slides there are great, but still, it looks really bad. Personally, I think they took out too many trees to make the Thanksgiving section and Voyage as well, but that's just me. I certainly would never think of shade when I think of my home park, SFoG, but Holiday World/Splashin Safari made SFoG look great in terms of shade. Most of the park was concrete or asphalt, and even though the high was only 82, it felt much hotter due to a lack of shade. It was a good thing that they have free drinks.

Friction wheels allow those huge Schwarzkopf portables to have a curved lift and save space (although chain can do this as well, Schwarzkopf opted for friction wheels). Chain lifts are the norm, I would imagine because they are cheaper to operate and can easily incorporate anti-rollback devices. The reason you see them on a lot of junior coasters is becuase junior coasters don't need anit rollbacks and that they could be cheaper on a small scale.

Let's see: North Carolina (lived there) Georgia (lived there) Kansas (lived there) Alabama (lived there) South Carolina Florida Virginia Maryland D.C. (not a state, but still) Delaware Pennsylvania New Jersey New York New Hampshire Vermont Connecticut Rhode Island Massachusetts Maine Ohio Kentucky West Virginia Illinois Indiana Tennessee Mississippi Louisiana Texas Arkansas Missouri Iowa Michigan Wisconsin Minnesota Colorado Nebraska Wyoming Montana Washington Oregon California Arizona Utah Nevada My parent's goal is to visit every state by the time I graduate from college-I just graduated from high school and only have Hawaii, Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Idaho, and the Dakotas left to visit. The other travel goal is to visit every country in Western Europe before I graduate from college, but we still haven't been to the Iberian or Scandinavian peninsulas.

Yeah, you could kinda tell Furious Baco was a bit rough. From the video you can see the wing that Robb is on bouncing up and down very slightly, especially in the first curve. The roughness probably stems from the arms that hold the seats being too loose. It has to be very difficult to engineer something that is stiff enough, durable enough, and light enough to be used on the cars. Hopefully they can get that issue sorted out. Anyway, looks like great fun, and Port Aventura is beautiful.

^Seven, the Voyage has seven tunnels. After 3rd hill After 4th hill After 5th hill Just before MCBR Entire triple down Through queue area Under bridge in Thanksgiving section Hades does looks very sweet, too bad the high hill on the turnaround and the high hill just before the finale helix have no air.

TTD is 0-120 in 4 seconds. Thus, all of the coasters that I listed have more intense (higher accelerational forces) launches than TTD. The list that was posted just after mine was older, and did not consider Stealth or Zaturn. Based purely on accelerational g's, the coasters that I listed have a "more intense" launch than TTD. However, TTD's is more prolonged, so that may contribute more to intensity.

Well, even though it doesn't look like it, they must have replaced that padding, because it used to be so hard and thin that it felt like metal. Did not feel good on those high lateral helixes that Hurricane had.

You're wrong, Xcelerator's launch is more powerful than Dragster's. The full list of launches more powerful (in acceleration) than Dragster's is as follows: Xcelerator Kingda Ka Stealth Zaturn Superman Escape Storm Runner Dodonpa Hypersonic XLC So yeah, it's not the most intense. It is very intense and very fun though.

Ummmm, those G-trains aren't heavily padded like you said. That's exactly the way they looked 9 months ago at the Pavilion. No extra padding or anything. Yay for hard rubber padding! Yay for G-trains!

I bet she just passed out due to heat or a pre-existing condition. The article made it seem like the lifeguards didn't see her for a long time, but she could have passed out and been seen just seconds later. I bet the cause of death won't be drowning either. EDIT: Congestive heart failure, didn't read the article, sorry.

Xcelerator and maybe Stealth have more powerful launches. SR might as well. It's a really fun ride. Not super intense or scary, just a lot of fun. However, I would argue that the level of enjoyment drops off significantly the longer the wait (just like any other coaster, but worse). A 10-15 minute wait is perfect for the great rush that it provides. An hour is way too much for such a short, albeit fun ride.

You missed the point. I was going for the imagery of the fat ACEr who says "Magnum and Beast are the best coasters in the world!" and who worships CP. Anyway, back on topic, what was your next park?

Seemed fine to me on the 8th of June. It was pretty slow at opening (11), but by the time I left at 5, it was moving pretty well. The airtime is still great on every hill, especially in the front car. Maybe you just caught it on a bad day, which seems to happen more and more often now as the coaster ages under CF management. It needs some TLC in the form of a GG or GCI retrack, but unfortunately it won't. In a few more years' time, there won't be any reason to visit MiA. Sad really...

200 km/h is nothing. Almost every country with developed high-speed rail lines has trains capable of at least those speeds or greater. Heck, even the USA with its pitiful national rail system even has Acela, which tops out at over 200 km/h. Looks fun, but that seems like quite a bit of travel just for the one small park in Seville.

Wow, that was a lot to read, not all of it legible, but hey, you finished all that TR. Did they have a Q&A with KI management? If so, did anyone ask them why they made the Beast suck? And Voyage is a pretty awesome ride, only two flaws on the whole thing (first inversely banked hill and 3rd 90 degree banked turn-they could have put two bunny hops instead of the 90* banked turn and the painful turn where they take your picture).