DirkFunk

I'll be stunned if it is any more exciting/big/whatever than Universal's equivalent to 7DMT. And that's a fine ride (with an acronym close to DMT-7, a choice hallucinogenic, dunno why thats never come up), but basically a non-factor in the scheme of being a "hory shet" kind of experience. I have no idea why I should be excited about an E-ticket, one-of-a-kind ride being replaced with something that's gonna be a C/D ticket style family ride where I can hear, "Harry, over here!" for the one millionth time.

I mean, you're not wrong. Even if they did go ahead with this fluffy, fluffy bunny filled with medicine and goo policy I'd have been totally okay with it if they added more fluffy, fluffy bunnies filled with medicine and goo and allowed the rides to duel again. If they had done those things then I wouldn't be nearly as happy about the prospect of them being removed for another Harry Potter attraction. Exactly - think of it like this too. Universal made the ride bad, and in doing so, the ride is now going away for something else. Why won't Universal just run that poorly too? Is there reason to think if this passes over people that it won't have metal detectors? How amped are you about being searched like you're entering a courthouse to ride something akin to the Coney Island Motocoaster?

Dragons being a shell of itself is entirely the result of the way Universal ran it. The refusal to allow dueling even after banning all foreign objects on riders was preposterous. A Harry Potter motorbike coaster is probably a one-and-done for me.

Yeah, you should. Even if you wait an hour for each, there's only 5-6 of 'em.

Not really. I think in general the people who are making those calls don't want actual numbers out there. Especially manufacturers. Would you want to let customers know what other people have paid?

Was their strategy. Remember the last stockholder call? They market the usage of the passes at alternate parks when the market can use it - Great America advertises that the passes are good at St. Louis and I'm sure the same is done in reverse. Magic Mountain's site mentions entry to Discovery Kingdom too. In those cases then yes, having a largely uniform product doesn't help. But they're all different enough at this point still that I don't think anyone is gonna get offended.

"I'm not mad. I'm actually laughing."

It feels like just yesterday that people were saying this ride could be done by opening day 2017. Are those people still around and claiming it'll be open next month?

Yeah, a lot of those people saying that haven't been in a decade. I haven't gone to the place when it wasn't a zoo in about 6-7 years. Even on a Tuesday in August it was packed.

Unless I'm confused here and missed something, Ratatouille is replacing nothing. This shouldn't even be a "no harm, no foul" thing. It's a fresh ride. Don't people want rides? Isn't that the point of going? As for EPCOT: Walt Wanted to build a city/industrial park/business incubator using other people's money, kicking out anyone who wasn't working, and controlling the minutiae of people's lives. Then he died almost 51 years ago. Fifty. One. Years. Ago. There is no EPCOT as he envisioned it and never will be. There are plenty of things like what he envisioned in part, but practically none in full because there is no actual commercial demand for it. What there was demand for was a theme park. E. Cardon Walker thought it would be a good idea to take the business model of Tomorrowland, Walt's "Permanent World's Fair," and expand it into an entire park. Why? Because corporations and countries could be convinced to spend really large sums of money to help him build it and save bucks on Disney's end. Now 35 years or so later, the world is different and the ROI for that kind of advertising is gone. No one wants to display their new tech at Disney first instead of CES or whatever. Why should Disney be building rides that question the existence of Global Warming on behalf of Petroleum companies? How is it Walt's Dream to take money from General Motors so they can construct a cartoon world in which mass transit is uniquely awful and the automobile is the only thing synonymous with freedom? It's nonsense and the Disboyz (and galz and other non-binary genderz) twist themselves into pretzels so that they can tell you that new rides and a new focus are terrible and that crass commercialism this time is actually wonderful, but terrible when its Starbucks. These people are the goddamned worst. The worst. It's philosophical masturbation intended to communicate to you that they are smarter than you because they aren't having fun on rides at an amusement park.

Oh good, everyone in Orlando can build a motorbike coaster now. Just what we all want: a bunch of variations on rides that almost nobody actually rates.

I agree based on my experience as well. Actually Six Flags ops as a whole this year when I've encountered them were....good? Maybe even better than Cedar Fair?

Riding Boulder Dash earlier in the year, the ride was running extremely well. My guess is that they switch trains and one is vastly superior to the other. Of course, they could run two - they used to run two - but apparently that's just not something they do any more. Like running the skyride.

If you have free tickets to Morey's, christ, use 'em all up. One day bands are really expensive IIRC and there's so much to see and do and the hours are LONG. LONG LONG LONG LONG. Like to 12AM long on Saturday nights (with those being soft times: if its bumping, they might still run rides past that). Do 40 rides. Do 60 rides. Don't run in and leave. Don't be that guy. That guy isn't cool. He's not fun.

Powers Great American Midways has one that they travel with that was recently heavily rehabbed and has an LED light package on it.

I'm not a therapist, and even if I could, I don't know that there's anything I could do which would effectively alleviate your stress from driving via this message board. I think if it is that big a deal to you, yes, you're going to realistically need to fly and rent a vehicle or rely on public transport.

Always heard good things about river cruises and it doesn't surprise me that Disney and their partner in AMA were able to do a great job here as well. BTW: Do people still go crazy for pins? Flip them (RARE~!) on EBay and pay for the trip.

They've stated numerous times on calls that they are still in the same mode of spending and are projecting to decrease their expenditures as a percentage of revenue. If people want to believe that they've decided to change now and build a bunch of gigacoasters and not that they've contracted for attractions with records that are basically meaningless (oh, the tallest S&S Freefly coaster! The tallest VR coaster!), that's on them to be disappointed about later. This thread exists to act as a reality check for them. In the meantime, be happy about the array of top notch B&M, RMC, and Intamin rides already present along with their commitment to indoor rides/attractions that Cedar Fair doesn't even try to match.

A 25-30 foot fall is technically survivable but probably with a ton of compound fractures and blood. I've seen people stage dive off platforms that tall at shows and survive just fine though assuming they hit enough hands to break the fall.

After re-reading my posts and how I worded them I guess I should probably specify that I don't either since it kind of came off that way. I'm not happy that she got hurt but I'm also not even the slightest bit sympathetic. Had I been at the park there's a much better chance that I would have been one of the guys sitting on the bench with a beer watching this unfold than one of the guys rushing over to help catch her. Watching a 14 year old girl die in front of me would harsh my vibe. I'd get up and be one of those people catching her, and then sue the shit out of Great Escape if I busted something doing it. I'm sure she didn't know to take a flat back bump. edit: lol, yeah, I guess I'm part of the problem. But I'd sue her parents too, and if they had any money, I'd probably be able to drop the Six Flags part.

-I don't wish the girl ill. She's a kid. Kids do dumb things. Sometimes there's even people who are adults who do dumb things to and lack the cognitive awareness to not make them. I don't relish their early demise. -Great Escape isn't even a "Six Flags" branded park, though they operate it. It's basically a family park. It retains the storybook junk. It lacks the giant coasters that attract the primarily teenage-early 20s crowd. -Parks generally choose to opt on the side of caution rather than common sense because caution is cheaper. Insurance companies don't care about common sense: They care about not paying out money to families to settle court cases, even ridiculous ones. Whether or not they have actually run numbers to establish that additional restraining systems offer any actual protection to guests is anyone's guess. I would bet real, substantive money that they have not done that analysis. After all, it's really irrelevant. They control the costs of premiums that the parks have to pay and there's a limited number of carriers to go to if you are a park. You might be able to self-insure depending on the state, but that's a whole lotta risk to take. Anyways, ride the wacky and rare stuff now and put aside the mass produced junk for later. Invariably insurance companies will regulate it out of existence regardless of how safe it is to protect themselves and make sure that you have the most homogeneous and dull experiences humanly possible.

Some of them will probably as asinine as half the "records" Valravn broke. But after Cedar Fair's 4 new coasters announcement, I'd like to bet that it was a scramble by the SF marketing team to appease the stockholders. It was made to a room full of ACErs at CoasterCon.

I think a Corvette is entirely worth the asking price. I also am not willing to purchase a Corvette which, while I respect it as a high performance sports car, it is entirely inappropriate for my lifestyle, not to mention income level. This isn't to say I couldn't afford one; I would simply need to make sacrifices in other aspects of our budget that I would rather not in comparison to owning another vehicle with little or no utility. What I'm getting at is that QBots and the like are very much about discretionary spending and should be concerns to patrons of a park. They are priced aggressively to create exactly that reaction. Even as a non-kid haver, I'm cognizant of that.

I'm sure the majority of employees are people working contracts for AMA Waterways (who Disney contracted to provide the boats), so they'd probably be the ones to go to.

Regardless of whether or not I went, the simulators miraculously being free in June, the merch discounts, and the extending of entry to resort guests has all happened. Those things would not be taking place if the park was half as busy as PortAventura itself, but even with its greatly reduced capacity, the board generally read 0 minute waits for all attractions (occasionally 10 for Flying Dreams) with a busy park next door. If I had to venture a guess, its that the groups going to the park right now aren't paying for Ferrari Land, but Port Aventura only. Maybe later on in the summer we stop seeing large groups attending the park, but that seems unlikely. And if that was the expectation, why hand out tickets to the 3-4000 you have on property instead of making them pay? I'm not that big a guy, so the lapbars on Dragster don't bother me at all. I definitely prefer its launch and the longer trains make it a more significant ride coming down. The track work is what it is. My wife said she got headaches from riding it because of the vibration, so it affects people differently. For whatever its worth, we both rode Furius Baco in the back and enjoyed it (though it plainly isn't as good a ride as Thunderbird), so we aren't total wusses here. The more basic simulator ride was right up my alley as a racing fan. The screens and film were in good shape, which is more than I can say about Ferrari World, if I may be so honest. I thought they were fine. Also realized afterwards that 2 of the 3 real indoor ride/attractions in the resort were sharing a building in Ferrari Land. -Car ride seemed to be a disaster. People literally screwing parts of it together as cars were going around. Ours just died when we pulled up to the station. It definitely looks great, but functionally I've never seen workers toiling over a car ride like that trying to keep it running 2+ months after it opened. It was like nothing fit together.