BigDipper 80

Welcome to the Black Parade- My Chemical Romance

As much as it isn't a surprise, it's still sad to see a piece of Cleveland history disappear. That's what it really was, not a fantastic roller coaster that enthusiasts would go crazy over, but rather a piece of history and a local favorite. If people weren't interested, it wouldn't constantly pop up in local newspapers for the past three years. And it always gets the big color pictures. I think that there would have been no point in trying to move it anywhere, because frankly, it wouldn't mean anything to very many other people outside of the area. Just because no one actually came up with a feasible solution on what to do with it doesn't mean that it was worthless. But really, it's only home was Geauga Lake, and it looks like that will be the only place that it ever operated. Perhaps it is best that it stays that way.

Summertime-Porgy and Bess

^Don't forget the exploding houses Honestly, though, I've never had a problem with living here. It has its charms. But! Back to WWK. It would be nice to see the park expand in the coming years. More slides would be nice. Might as well open up the 3D theater and the simulator, too. It'd be something unique to the area and be a quick addition to the park since all of the infrastructure is still there (I think...)

Someone put crap in my mailbox... and it wasn't the local prankster... Djurs Sommerland and SFDK! Two places I have never been, but now I can pretend that I have been there! DCA and Legoland Billund! More places I can pretend to have visited! And, of course, there is the magical TPR pen that writes with liquid gold and feeds me chocolates while solving difficult calculus problems for me. This is just a great pile of crap. I thought only chimpanzees enjoyed the flinging of crap, but I have been proven wrong. Thanks for all the crap, Robb! This pretty much made up for the failure known as an AP Calculus test...

The other thing is, the park during the Cedar Fair years was really too big. A park of that size needed to be pulling attendance figures larger than 700,000. That doesn't mean that it was a bad park (I always enjoyed the place quite a lot!), and it may have survived if it weathered the downsizing. But it didn't, and it really wouldn't have made sense to keep it running in its 2007 condition. By that point, everything was lost. Nothing that anyone can do about it. Business is business, and life goes on. Not to open up a can of worms, but one question: We all know that CF bought the park to shut it down. But was an explanation ever given for why the closure was announced AFTER the season had already ended as opposed to during Septemberfest or some earlier time in the season? In hindsight it was pretty obvious that 2007 would probably be the last season for the park, but I know that the closure was surprising at the time and was in ALL of the papers in the area, and Big Dipper continues to come up in the papers. But why AFTER the season? *ducks from the crazed Geauga Lake conspiracy theorists*

It isn't that they aren't good water parks, it's just that there is something about them that I just don't like. Kalahari has a lot of "stuff", and it is a lot of fun swimming with snow on the ground, but I guess that I like fresh air just a little bit better. Whatever.

Great pictures! WWK really is a nice waterpark, and it would be a shame to see it close. I would much rather go there than to any of the bazillion indoor parks in Sandusky!

^Mean Streak hasn't been running its third train all season. Which, as a result, has actually given the ride a line ! I'm not sure about Corkscrew, though. But then again, there aren't many days that would warrant a third train for that ride (it would just lead to massive stacking on the block brake, anyway).

I would like to see something go into the old Wonders of Life pavilion at Epcot. How about an updated version of Adventure Thru Inner Space? That ride just screams "Epcot".

Does anyone know of a custom scenery set that has Tudor/Georgian walls, sort of like the ones in Wacky Worlds? I would just use those, but I'm not a big fan of any of the RCT2 expansion packs and don't want all of the useless coasters and scenery cluttering up my game menus.

I got bored the other day, so I started up on this. Nothing too big or flashy, but just something for fun: SCR1.BMP SCR2.BMP SCR3.BMP SCR4.BMP SCR6.BMP An overview shot of the park

I read somewhere that one of the reasons that Karl Bacon decided to create the OTSR was to make riders feel safe. He mentioned that, of course the g-forces would hold a rider in even without a lap bar, but the OTSR's would be needed a) if somehow the train got stuck in the corkscrew, and b) it made riders feel more secure. I know that one of my friends once said that he was scared of Millennium Force mainly because it didn't have OTSR's. As much as many of us feel that such restraints can be annoying and inhibiting, there are numbers of people out there who feel more secure with something surrounding them. Of course there are many other debatable points and my particular point doesn't apply to everyone, I thought that it might be worth it to throw out some more opinion.

I call dibs... But really, what would be the point in saving the ride at this point? There are memories, but everything goes away eventually. As much as I enjoy history and the preservation of history for future generations, life goes on. If anything, restore the carousel back to working order. Any hand-carved carousel is a work of art and should be saved.

Having never ridden the Voyage, I was just wondering- would you say that it was noticeably 'smoother' or 'less aggressive' during its first couple of operating seasons and it has simply been difficult to maintain causing it to tear itself apart much like Hades? Or have you just never really been a big fan of the ride?

I think that the new soundtrack is pretty nice! It has a good beat that you could dance to. Although it's not fully orchestrated (I do love a good orchestral piece), I think that this soundtrack will work very effectively with the ride without really adding too much of a 'plot', so to speak, as the Disneyland soundtrack seems to do. The 'tag' at the end that they borrowed from Disneyland at the end of the piece does a nice job at tying the ride back to the whole 'Space Mountain brand' (and the fact that that particular theme is played on the exit ramp!) while allowing the song (and the ride) to maintain it's uniqueness.But most importantly, it's simple and catchy, and really, that's all that it needs to be for people to enjoy it.

I believe it was Plato that said that in the "ideal" (your mind), everything is perfect, but as soon as you try to duplicate that "ideal thing" from your mind, you run into problems. And as you make copies of the copies of the thing from your mind, more and more error is introduced, so yeah, pretty much anything is going to have issues, and as you said, Robb, with something as large and complex as a roller coaster, such problems are guaranteed to happen. It really is pretty amazing that so many things in life actually work as well as they do, coaster or otherwise.

I really just despise the planet right now. Everyone seems so...fake. Life, it seems, is just a big game of charades that no one can ever win.

Hmm, I need to keep an eye out for that when I head out to the park in a few weeks, with me being a Big Dipper fanboy and whatnot...

I must say that I love the new retro poster advertising the sound system. Retro 1950's/60's future is so much cooler and fun than the current vision of the future! Retro Space Mountain is so cool! And I love the whole "space tourism" airline-type thing instead of something cold and impersonal.

I've been a hardcore band geek since I got into high school. That particular video are actually from my sophomore year since I can't find anything more recent. 2008 was a big shakeup as our band director got fired for reasons I won't go into, but we've been rebuilding and we're almost as large as we were back then (around 220 members, not counting the drill team). Band really is just an absolute blast, even if our new director can be a bit demanding and controlling at times (and our music selections aren't as great as they used to be, but they're improving as the new guy gets used to it ) Oh yeah, I play good old clarinet, if anyone was wondering. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zatRIBDXU3U This one is a little more recent (2009). I just found it. Sorry about it not being the best quality.

It's really awful that it's only day three of my senior year and I'm already expected to know what limits are and how to use them, how the Plague affected central Europe, why the poem 'Pied Beauty' is significant for anything, have about 30 pieces of music and drills memorized for marching band, and to know that 'public static void main (String[]args)' actually means something in Java without it being explained to me. UGH.

Interesting. Granted, this is the Plain Dealer, but I have never seen a news article actually print backlash against a ride before. And the fact that so many members of the public (on top of the fanboys) feel that Cedar Point should never add anything but roller coasters ever again just goes to show how incredibly difficult it is going to be for the park to change its perceived image from the past two decades.

I guess when put into terms like that, the whole decision makes a LOT more sense. It still seems a little weird to some extent, but really, who cares? Four parks are getting brand new rides, which should make anyone squeal with delight!

I don't think that this will be too big of a problem in the extreme north and south parts of the state, as Kings Island and its additions are rarely mentioned up here in Cleveland, and it's probably similar for Cedar Point down in Cincinnati (especially with lower-key attractions). I don't think that many people who regular one park or the other will have that big of a problem with a park they are unfamiliar with getting the same ride. Granted, it is still a little weird that parks four hours apart are getting similar attractions, and it will lead to some interesting marketing in the Columbus area. "New in 2011 at Cedar Point, Windseeker! New at Kings Island, err, the, um, exact same thing!"