DirkFunk

Noted. #1 with all the bullets around it - Most hotels are going to have a minimum age of 21 to check in, especially in Sandusky. Can't stress this enough as being an important aspect. I'm not saying you won't be allowed to, but I would seriously, SERIOUSLY look into alternate lodging options like AirBnB for this reason. If you wait one week, you could save a few pennies (actually more than that) by replacing Kentucky Kingdom with a combo of Coney Island Cincinnati and Stricker's Grove (which is open for the 4-H Community Fair). Stricker's has all day ride bands for $14. Coney's rides band is $15.50 at the gate. Kentucky Kingdom one day admission is like twice that, plus much further away. I'm not saying it is a bad park, I'm just throwing that out to you. You can even use your Cedar Fair season pass to obtain admission discounts on the duck boats in Newport, KY across the Ohio River from Cinci if you want. I think so. For me it would be. Both could be busy. I'd go for whatever would offer longer hours. If you have a Platinum Pass, I think you still obtain a discount. Well - Kings Island will be busy. You can't avoid that. The best you can do on that Saturday night is target stuff that is higher capacity but isn't not ridiculously popular. Dark ride, Adventure Express, Racer, Vortex: those sorts of rides.

Since this is a wholly independent entity paying a license fee and the difficulties involved with information transfer, I would guess not re: use of Six Flags season passes from the US there. But that assumes these ever actually open.

Yeah, to me it's kinda like arguing that Cobra's Curse, Shiekra, and Montu are "all minor variations on the same idea." Disney made their name building parks that primarily consisted of slow moving dark rides, if you want to talk "minor variation."

They already have a Intamin Magnetic Launch type of attraction a short walk away from Tomorrowland. Like, the original "Cheetah Hunt" style family thriller. I hope to god Disney has more ideas than that.

I'm wondering this too honestly. If this post is coming from an 18 year old then it's hilarious and I hope this thread goes on for days but I'm pretty sure the original poster is about 8 years old and then I might give legitimate advice. Lol I'm torn here... If they're 18, holy shit, they're BAH GAWD KING HES EMOTIONALLY BROKEN IN HALF. If he's 8, its more like "Son, you need to lurk & learn for a solid 6-7 years before you get back into web forums with adults."

Honest question: How old are you?

Rides have to have some degree of comfort to me, and there's often a correlation between "forceful rides" and insane amounts of restraints or super tight/close lap bars that I don't enjoy. I'm not that old, but I am old enough to remember the dying days of *really* intense old school wood coasters when they were still good (like Riverside Cyclone), and the new reality of pinning me down and then trying to launch me doesn't have a lot of appeal as a result. I suppose if this is all you've ever known, it might be different. I can't speak to that. Speed doesn't necessitate that and rides near or over 100MPH will thrill me, possibly more than parabolic hills that feel very much the same as parabolic hills designed and fabricated by the exact same people many times over across the globe. They're also rarer as a result of the expense related in building them. So I guess I prefer speed? And if I want something more exciting forcewise, I'll go do something actually thrilling like bungee jumping/skycoaster/SCAD/skydiving/et al.

Soarin is expected to reopen in the Summer. Frozen is looking at May last I heard but who knows.

The parks suffers from a combination of poor management, a lack of true capital investment to generate interest in the park and the perception alot of black people that go to that park which I think creates an extra layer or unfair racial stereotypes about the park and the people that attend the park. This pretty much touches all the most significant bases. If you wanted to add one in, it was that the infrastructure of the park was built poorly intentionally to save money, and it results in all sorts of problems that should have been obvious long term concerns but that was considered unnecessary to address.

Sure. I hope I'm helpful. With purchases of queue jump bands/bots, I think Carowinds, Six Flags, and Kings Dominion are single day parks. They just don't have that much outside the coasters worth serious time spent on, and the coasters themselves are, by and large, not necessarily all day session rides. Dollywood and Busch Gardens are different situations. The region in which you're heading is one of the richest in terms of historical attractions pertinent to the development of the United States. Washington DC is filled with *free* museums that are absolutely world class. Monticello is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mount Vernon and Historic Williamsburg are extremely notable places dealing with American history. Gettysburg is nearby the general route and the most well known battlefield in the country. Nashville is the center of the Country Music industry. The Biltmore Estate is roughly halfway between Dollywood and Carowinds and is the largest home ever constructed in the Western Hemisphere. There's also beaches like Emerald Isle as well as full tilt boardwalks and resort cities like Ocean City, Maryland and Virginia Beach. Those are the most obvious things to me. And since you're heading down south, soul food and barbecue should be the primary targets. If you want a relaxed trip, there's not many options I'd actively suggest. Somewhere like Pigeon Forge could easily eat 4-5 days if you plan to spend significant time in the Smokeys. Lake Winnepesaukah would be something I'd actually throw out there though. Historic and unique stuff there and along the route. Virginia has one of the lowest sales taxes in the nation. Northern Virginia by Washington DC will have everything you can imagine in existence. You'll likely find other/better deals further south. Yes, there's outlet shopping, but this is 2016 and now outlets have clothing produced specifically for them rather than be locations at which you'd find ridiculous deals on 1st rate merch. You'll at least find a lot of major retailers all together. Price out several different companies and see if you can get a deal with any. I'd stick with the major national brands: Hertz, Avis, National, Enterprise, Alamo, Dollar, Budget. When we say "it depends", a lot of that has to do with local demand. Taking a one way rental from Fort Myers to Detroit in the dead of winter will be cheap and desired by rental firms because it will return cars to them. Taking a car from DC to Atlanta isn't nearly as desirable from their perspective.

I'd probably help out some smaller community amusement parks (the Bay Beaches of the world), but the bulk of the money would go to buying a ton of rainforest or savannah and hiring the coldest killers imaginable to watch over it as a wildlife refuge. Like a pack of Chechnyans that watched their families die. Just ice cold.

Should I assume the creation of this thread means the Wild Bill's thread won't be seeing any more updates?

Assuming the weather is equally good, Saturday the 2nd will be busiest followed by the 4th if they do fireworks on that day. Prices can occasionally rise during the season on them, but to be honest, I've never seen Cedar Point sell out of Fast Lane bands before opening ever. I would harbor a strong guess that they always have some for sale at the gate or wherever, though I could not guarantee that to you. With you being there for so long, I would suggest to you to pick a day in the schedule and target that as the day you will primarily go on rides. Every other day plan to go sit at the beach or water park and chill for long periods. Maybe book a fishing charter or something like that.

Removing the laterals from the helix basically makes it a huge waste of time. I understand that there are other people don't prefer laterals that much, but hey, there's a whole lot of other coasters in the world for you to ride. Can I maybe preserve one or two that actually have changes in direction? Because no amount of changes to Legend is ever going to make it Balder or Phoenix if that's your type of ride.

But GP opinion and perspective probably had a lot to do with OTSRs being used on many rides. I doubt it. Probably more to do with liability insurance and the difficulties of engineering proper lapbars and proper trains. Schwarzkopf always got a lot of credit for doing that, but my recollection is that when they had to throw sheets over a bunch of bodies in Edmonton, that's when the accordions came. Not until Premier years later did it return to being en vogue.

There are some enthusiasts who have a relationship with some parks, and those parks may seek advice of those individuals and their appreciable experience with rides to get information about potential additions. I'm sure the opinions of Furius Baco in the enthusiast world have not, by and large, endeared it to possible customers. But that's about the extent of it.

Kemah's open all week long. Galveston Pier too, I think. Adventuredome at Circus Circus. There's probably a few I'm not thinking of.

That's not happening. The story about Secret Life of Pets though is pretty much 100% legit from what I understand. Same with Orlando.

Well, right now they claim to have "affluenza" in that situation and flee to Mexico. At least if it is legal, maybe he gets a cab. Personally I think it is stupid that people can fight and die on foreign soil but can't have a beer.

I guess my perception is that I-Drive is a tourist drag. When I think of a "locals place," I don't think of somewhere that locals won't go half of the week because crowds and traffic are too gnarly to possibly justify in transit there. RE: alcohol - kids already drink and do dumb things in America, except they have to do it covertly and aren't able to afford some of the legal luxuries that people over 21 have when they imbibe to not get into trouble afterwards. I've travelled enough in the world to know that people privileged enough to have disposable crap are probably also privileged enough to be jerks, and American youth isn't one iota different in that regard. If you still feel that way, please feel free to repeat it to me when a pack of flag waiving Brazilians cuts us in line at WDW, when a feisty German pushes their way through the crowd around the antipasti in a smorgasbord, or when you're inhaling the smoke of 50 Chinese people's cigarettes in a Disney knockoff theme park queue line.

If you're going to I-Drive for Mom and Pop/Locals joints, you are definitely "doing it wrong".

Of the ones I've been on, the standups they built are uniformly bad. Green Lantern at SFMM sucks and that's even sadder having been on Insane at Grona Lund and knowing what that ride style has going for it at best. Pegasus at Efteling was bottom tier stuff; tracked fine, did absolutely nothing. Haven't been on any of their big multi-inversion sitdown rides in many years bur wouldn't be surprised if Colossus/Avalancha/etc was Arrow rough based on most of the descriptions given now by riders. Anything else is something I haven't been on and won't speak of.

That ride isn't portable, for starters. I'm sure upcharge attractions do fine there. But maybe it isn't one given that they don't demand an upcharge for the bumper boats and their near nonexistent capacity.

Totally fair comparison, and now I'm curious. I wonder - what kind of ridership does the Big Manhattan Roller Coaster Apple Express get that isn't already staying at the resort? Is it a popular local attraction? It probably gets a bunch of people. I think the key for me is that it is intertwined/attached to a hotel-casino which it intends to draw some visitors into and I haven't read that Polercoaster is specifically intended to be part of any development effort in Atlantic City aside from its own. In Orlando it is part of a whole district that will be constructed to improve the area.

As an anchor/drawing card for other stuff, I can see the potential. The question then becomes: So what's the other stuff? I can't for the life of me see the Polercoaster ever be self sufficient on its own. There's a reason why nobody anywhere, even the Mouse, builds $350 million dollar rides.