DirkFunk

Been on 4 of the rides listed (was denied Kanonen); overall, the best is definitely Formula Rossa (which is one of my favorites anywhere), but on this list it would be Dragster. I could see Storm Runner with new restraints supplanting it, however.

For a park that has one top 50-ish steel coaster and a bunch of junk, it is pretty great. They have some impressive big flat rides, and the park's infrastructure is actually pretty nice. I love the entry area. Their food options are above average for sure, and FASCINATION~!. But yes, the abandoned mini golf is a bad look, and so is the fact that the coasters are all pretty lousy.

I said the same thing about Drop Tower's footprint and status in the park when I was told and the response was, "Yeah, but you know about all the problems its had this year (2015), right?" Drop Tower is a long way from the rapids ride though and I hear things that are wrong on occasion. I don't pretend to have a 100% hit rate and honestly, who even cares if I did?

There's no way the drop tower is on its way out, I really don't believe this will be a giga. Not telling you it is or isn't, just that birdies told me last year that they were getting a gate coaster similar to Fury 325 and those two rides were peace'ing out. Is it bad info and they're actually getting a interlocking Meisho shuttles? Bro, don't know. The source was above average; can't remember him being wrong when it comes to declarative stuff.

I was told a chunk of Action Zone was getting the boot as part of the Giga plan when I first heard of it a couple months ago and that the drop tower and inverted boomerang are on their way out, but hey, who knows.

Nothing happening. Park expansions all on hold.

Are the Platinum Passholder early entry days listed anywhere yet? I'll be in Toronto on May 28th before I get on a flight and was hoping they might be running a few things before official opening.

Disney has always priced themselves like a deluxe line while producing a mainstream line product. But most DISNEY DISNEY DISNEY people are addicted to that brand like Lindsey Lohan is cocaine, so they'll go in debt for the privilege of watching Mickey's Sailaway Dance Party or whatever.

The major lines all try to be all things to all people. You watch the in room Royal Caribbean channel and they go from discussing drinking Louis XIII to bumper cars in a span of 90 seconds.

Yeah, they are. If indeed they had decided to go with an untested supplier for the launch and not someone who had a track record, then they probably deserve to get their feet set to their fire a bit. To RMC's credit though, they did get the structure and trains ready for opening. That's no small feat.

Hoping this is open first week of June. If not, well...not the worst thing in the world to miss, I suppose.

I blame Eisner. Isn't he the dip that separated the movie and theme park money? If those profits were easily transferable I doubt there'd be any issue. Yeah, but that separation also means that ESPN fees dropping doesn't affect the theme park budget directly. In truth, it doesn't matter: Disney needs to show growth and a resort fee being tacked on is a quick and easy way to obtain additional revenue. No different than how airlines keep charging fuel surcharges and for checked bags even though WTI trading at ~$42 a barrel is considered high now.

Yeah, I mess with water parks. Truthfully though, the industry is so homogenized that I don't generally get excited for water parks now unless there's something really wild or different that one has. Whitewater and Proslide are probably 90%+ of the market in the US with Polin being almost all the the remainder, and they all make basically the same types of slides. Old water slides (like concrete death traps), water coasters, and lazy rivers are basically what I'm about with those. Everything else is a "seen it once, seen it a million times" situation after a couple years pass.

I'd look at a website like EasyWDW that can offer in depth touring plans and things of that nature. I would suggest that you look into making dining reservations pretty soon if you see something that looks particularly good. Same with rides - that may have opened upwards of a month ago for you.

Is that a brake run I spy after the "drop." Nah. Probably just elevates the raft post drop. If you just had the raft drop 40 feet at a pretty abrupt angle, it would be kinda uncomfortable.

Most newer post-60s book theme parks are flat as a pancake. When you have no topography, it's pretty easy to install any off the shelf design for a ride or duplicate those designs. And yes, buying multiples helps costs out, so I'm sure that's part of it. But production model rides have been part of the business since the days when side friction figure 8s were the dominant coaster style.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Hot take: individuals don't actually need to take into account intent or motive when determining whether or not something is, to them, subjectively good. Almost everything ever done in the theme and amusement park universe is done to try and get people to spend as much money as possible while incurring as few costs as possible. That doesn't make all of it "good." Often it is even bad. Occasionally it can be ruinous.

This is good advice just about anywhere, but definitely in Europe. Plus a lot of places you can just do your own thing assuming you aren't scared to use an automated ticket machine.

It depends what you want and how much transit time you're willing to spend on trains/buses, honestly. There's big obvious stuff (Sagrada Familia, Pompeii, Monaco) with those ports, there's less obvious stuff (Cinque Terre, Siena, Amalfi Coast, Saint-Rémy). To me, you can't go wrong with any of it. If you don't care about art/architecture/urban parks & spaces/history, you could always do something else like hit summer funfairs on the Cote D'Azur?

A couple things north of Tampa that you might want to consider as replacements for Clearwater Beach: Weeki Wachee: Yes, there's a water park and beach set up here. The stars of the show though are the mermaids. Dating back to the 1950s, they do an underwater choreography show which you watch below ground level through a sturdy aquarium style glass window. They breathe using tubes that constantly pump breathable oxygen. http://www.weekiwachee.com/ Crystal River to swim with Manatees: It doesn't get more self explanatory than "You swim with manatees". http://www.riverventures.com/

I would just spend the extra cash to stay in the park, you are already flying into Cleveland so why not stay in the park? You will also get early entry by staying in the park, gives you an additional 2 hours ride time without any sort of crowds to contend with. You'd spend a bunch of money on taxis anyhow trying to get in and out staying off site too. Might as well just stay on property at Breakers in the cheapest room.

Bullshit. Kristen is 9 and in shoes she's barely 51 inches. Sure there are kids taller, but if I was a betting man, I'd say most 9 year olds would be totally hit & miss on a 54" height restriction. A 10 year old, you're getting closer. But 9? No way most 9 year old kid is going to make it on, not even close. After doing some research (because I was curious) turns out an average 9 year old child is going to be about 49-52 inches (without shoes). Obviously there are some that will be taller, but the average is 49-52 inches (Without shoes)... So I'm not sure where the: comes from. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_252.pdf Mean is 137.9 cm for males (54.29 in), 137 cm for females (53.93). The 50th percentile for both boys and girls is 136.7 (53.81 in). This is considered the most accurate and up to date anthropometric available related to Americans. I had pulled up a different chart where I found it at work, but the posted growth charts would contradict me and suggest that the median 50% percentile mark i cited could be lower than that. It might also be that the label on the chart was erroneously written and they meant "mean". But I can't back up that specific initial statement with 5 minutes of Googling right now, and so take that for what you will. Anyways.... edit: this doesn't mean other tables are "wrong" either - the WHO would be basing their numbers in global data, which means a lot of countries where malnutrition may stunt growth or where the overall population averages being shorter see significant representation (China, India, Japan, etc). CDC's Clinical Growth Charts are based on data from the 2000 survey and attempts to smooth out a significant variance in the height reported between the first six months of 9 year olds lives and the second 6 months. Other charts may be based on any number of different data sets. I can't tell simply looking at them. By and large, insurance companies are not going to sit around and try to cut a theme park a break in pricing by running data sets in ArcGIS to see if there's a disproportionate Asian or Mestizo population near a given park that might affect the average height of the patrons specifically going. They'd look at those CDC mean numbers and adjust accordingly based on the age by which the park/manufacturer wants to allow patrons on.

Yup. Height requirements are generally used as a stand-in for age requirements for insurance companies. You probably know that the average height of people has increased over time: the median height of a 9 year old child is roughly 54 inches (doesn't that number sound familiar?) without shoes. That's an approximate 10% increase over 100 years ago. In some countries, the increase is greater. The average adult in the Netherlands is 3 inches taller than one in the US, and that reflects in kids too.

You're pretty limited in Labadee and even to some extent in Falmouth. For Cozumel, I'm pretty much 100% opposed to wasting precious time taking the ferry to Playa De Carmen for anything on the mainland. My wife did one of the beach break excursions a couple months ago when sailing on the Brilliance (?) from Tampa, and reported that it was good. "Three Reef Snorkel" is a commonly seen excursion at the Cozumel ports and even with the reef damage that's been sustained there, you'll see some pretty cool stuff. The one that's interested me along those lines for awhile is Isla Pasion via Twister, which is a jet boat ride to a beach club sorta situation. The town itself is the worst of mass tourism. I'd barely bother walking around.

I feel bad because I don't want this to be a thread where I call for some people's professional careers to be ended. I don't know what limitations they were given, and that's not a fair thing to do to them given the circumstances. I do call into question a lot of the ride and show choices at those parks, even with the big steel they're building this year in Florida. They've also chosen to go with some ride systems that were "not ready for primetime" and I don't think there's a lot of argument that it has had a damaging effect on their gate when things like Mach Tower or Falcon's Fury turn out to be months late. But my bloodlust should be largely satiated: the top of the company has been turned over, and we'll see how things go from there.