DirkFunk

I feel worse for the community depending on a park owned by incompetent group such as Morgan. You'll probably find it tough to find contractors in this industry who will work for you when you have consistently not paid vendors in the past. That kind of activity is gonna bury this place, and it is an absolute shame. They need to hand it over to someone with a clue.

They haven't announced it on their facebook as opening and site work hadn't even started as of last month. I seriously doubt it is even close to operational by their last operating day (a month or so from now).

Urethane wheels slow the train down by producing more rolling resistance on the track. It would barely make it back.

I heard (haven't confirmed it) that it was struck by lightning and fried the PLCs. Could be a little while. That's too bad.

If it is a water slide, there's gonna be water pouring down off that thing pretty much all the time. I think it appears a bit unsightly, but cruise ships are all in a race to be as ugly as possible now anyhow. Looks like it would be fun. Do I need more reason than that?

I never can remember - Did Intamin actually create that or were they the broker for the technology?

I pretty much far prefer hyper coasters over everything else in steel rides and if I ranked, B&M hypers/gigas would pretty much occupy my entire top ten. One of the few inverting rides that might break that log jam would be Maverick. Millennium Force would not.

Hands down: Sun Park. http://rcdb.com/5252.htm 10 Chinese built steel coasters, most family or kiddie models.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They can't just sit there and say "No one wants to work." Someone is getting hired to run Mac Woods, museums, Double J Ranch, all that stuff in the immediate vicinity. Hell, carnivals spend money to get people on visas for working at them. If there are people are willing to risk death to take a job in Qatari construction, I'm willing to bet Michgan's Adventure can find someone to run rides for 4 months.

I see a news note about it online but I can't find the route on their website. Does Michigan's Adventure do job fairs in Muskegon or appear at high schools to offer applications and meet with prospective employees?

If you don't have a car (lots of teenagers probably don't), then you'd need to get to the park by public transportation, and they really don't do anything to help with that. There's plenty of people in America looking for work - if they can't find people to do it, they either aren't paying enough to make it look attractive and/or aren't providing the sort of infrastructure to get employees to work that they need. That's on them. If they can't get people to work there because a Macy's will offer similar pay & benefits, who's fault is that?

Lots of parks have some sort of system set up for dorms - Lake Compounce used to use ones from the Community College down the street. Six Flags New England used an old motel; it came under fire when an international employee was killed trying to cross the street, an act Six Flags made grounds for termination EVEN IF YOU USED THE PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE. But I digress. Cedar Point's dorm system is different in that it is open to *all* and not merely internationals (people who've been brought in on short term visas to work). People come from far and wide domestically to go work at Cedar Point. That may make the employees there a bit more like carnies than the average park, but there's some degree of professionalism that comes of that too. Anyways, Michigan's Adventure doesn't have dorms, doesn't provide transportation options for people from the city or surrounding areas of Muskegon without cars to work there, and doesn't bring in people on visas to work there as far as I know.

IMO, for what little it is worth, I don't think the bulk of people here would rush to Reddit instead. I don't really believe it would split the base unless you made the concerted effort to post your newer content there rather than here. Having said that, the battle will immediately be with moderation. If that's a battle you want to take on, go for it. I tend to believe it will be a lot of energy spent with a questionable return.

It's an additional 45 minutes, but I think that's time well spent. There's also Chatham-Kent as well as an option. Several hotels are located there. I'd compare prices. The biggest thing you should keep in mind is that if you go in the morning, you might run into traffic crossing the border for work. Lots of people commute from Canada into the US for work.

The Michigan's Adventure thread had a link to that park's Coaster Campout. Aside from the fact that it is a coaster event of some sort at Michigan's Adventure, the part that surprised me was the reveal on this: http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/bsqry/f?p=100:7:300590638455379::NO:7:P7_CHARTER_NUM:2320665 I wonder what this means with GKTW and Cedar Fair going forwards? The obvious thing to do is have that money donated to your own charitable organization, right?

So geeked to go there in a couple months. Hell, this made me consider needing a two day pass.

S'up. This is pretty descriptive so kudos for that. Actually pretty helpful. That's probably a very aggressive time you're setting for yourself going from the UIC campus to Kings Island. JMHO. Also while that's a fine museum, I would also strongly suggest the Museum of Science and Industry on the same campus. It resides in a building left over from the 1893 Colombian Expo and also happens to be *enormous*. But with just two hours, perhaps you've chosen wisely. I would also suggest going cheap and heading downtown for breakfast and a walk around something like Grant Park. Maybe looking at some architecture in that area as well. You may get more out of that and a better understanding of Chicago as a result. If you get there in time, you should be able to manage a lot of that due to capacity. I might even suggest saving Beast until the next morning. Drop Tower here is the same as the ride at Kings Dominion. Suggestion: Leave KI even earlier if you did damage on the night prior with the high capacity rides like Adventure Express and Racer, head to Cincinnati Art Museum. It is quite excellent and also free for entrance. Ohio has great public art museums and zoos - go figure. I'd also seriously consider driving past Princeton. If you left the park at 1, did the museum until 3, and then drove 5 hours with a 30 minute food stop, that's still only 8:30PM. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts might be along your path - you might want to check into it. They have the largest collection of Faberge eggs outside Russia. Lakemont closes at 8PM - you're some bad traffic away from missing out on that and spending only an hour and a half at Knoebels. My suggestion to you is to skip Dorney or leave as soon as possible after riding those three rides (easily achievable before 11AM). I would personally skip it, do Lakemont first, then Knoebels second to maximize your time. Everything at Dorney of value except maybe Demon Drop will be there for many years to come (this assumes Cedar Fair cares enough to actually scrap Demon Drop). Lakemont looks very much like a place that won't be here soon. Also, while this seems counter intuitive, you may want to consider Lakemont first and then double back to Knoebels even with the Dorney stop. Lakemont is in the wrong direction from Knoebels to Cleveland to begin with. What you lose on the road you might get back by flying through Lakemont (which will be *dead*) and getting to Knoebels with its later close. Danville isn't that much further from Cleveland than Altoona either. I would stay around a little later at CW and then just drive to Detroit. I doubt you'll even save that much staying in Sarnia vs. staying at the Aloft or Courtyard in Downtown Detroit. You might have some time to stop in at the Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson, MI on your way over. There's actually a pretty rad exhibit they run inside a now disused portion of the State Prison in Jackson. Thursdays are their late day and they're open until 7PM. Alternately, the Grand Rapids Art Museum is open until 9 that same evening. If you haven't done so already, check the schedules. Many art museums operate late one day of the week. I'm sure you already know that but I swear I'm not being pedantic. People forget things sometimes.

The Cleveland metro area has about 2.1 million people in it. The Detroit/Windsor metro area has 5.7 million people in it. Cleveland residents could also go to Kennywood or Waldameer in addition to Cedar Point. Detroit residents really have no alternative for a theme park. From what I've heard going back over a decade, Detroit is the most important market for Cedar Point.

Kidzone is what everyone who knows stuff says.

Remember how I305 is the best steel coaster ever? 5 years is not a long time, you cannot claim that they've cut off all business with Intamin. It's definitely not plausible they'd go with anybody other than B&M, judging by the last 3 years at Cedar Fair. But you cannot say 0%. I'm sure that despite the 4 modifications, I305 brought in an insane amount of business for KD. It's all guesswork on our part not having the numbers. Given that Cedar Fair ended up demanding tax breaks before expanding and then ended up deciding to push large capex projects to Carowinds specifically instead of KD, maybe they didn't get back what was expected or hoped for?

Dippin Dots man says it isn't a coaster or a dark ride. Dippin Dots man has also been really accurate this year, fwiw.

US Bankruptcy Court has ruled that Caesars must face lawsuits from creditors and the stock immediately nose-dived. It's down about 40% right now with the company suggesting that it will join Harrah's (operating company) in bankruptcy as a result of this. One has to believe Bally's and Flamingo could be in trouble as a result.

Kentucky Kingdom rebuilt the correct wood coaster and decided to get rid of the correct one also. The only thing that I think is a bummer is that it won't duel.

There you go. There's no crappy log flume. You "missed out". Actually, it looks like most of the good flat rides are gone too. Huh.

(2) Not sure if/when I'll be back to the park, so I'd like to do multiple runs on Bizarro, but in case I only get one shot at it... is there a generally agreed upon 'best seat' for Bizarro? Back/Front? They're all decent. I think the fronts of the cars might have a little more leg room if you're tall. Or like average height. Or anything but a midget. (5) Are there any other notable rides I should make sure I ride? Among the flats, most people pointed out Tomahawk. It's a good Huss Frisbee for a park model. Houdini is excellent if it is open, which it may never be. The log flume is a crap example of the genre. The antiques aren't bad if they're still around. There's also a solid magic carpet style attraction called Buzzsaw I was always a fan of. The Starflyer looks good, but I haven't been to the park in awhile to ride it. Across the street at the pizza place. Seriously. The park's reputation for rank and terrible food far predates being a "flagged" park. It is actually much better now than back in the day. I also lived most of my life in Connecticut and somehow managed to never get robbed in spite of hanging with friends in Hartford's South End and working downtown for several years. With that having been said, I don't know that any of it is a "must see". There's many historic homes to tour dating back to the 18th century (Mark Twain's is particularly popular) and the Wadsworth Atheneum is a decent art museum but I don't consider them *must* do's. Food might be a little different - Franklin Ave. is home to some outstanding places. Mozzicato's is the gold standard for bakeries in Connecticut (excellent cannoli's), and Modern Bakery is an offshoot of the same family and they're about on par if that place is busy. Carbone's is top notch Italian food. If you want a serious sandwich, Franklin Giant will feed you and an army for fairly little. There's also a lot of very good Puerto Rican and Jamaican bakeries and restaurants if fried food sounds appealing to you. Another suggestion might be to take the Berlin Turnpike and see the CT version of Route 66. Lots of cool old diners, wacky mini golf, and now there's a Stew Leonards for your high end grocery/animatronic needs. Route 8 through Western Mass and CT is a gorgeous drive.