DirkFunk

WDW is better in every way except number of rides and the difficult to ascertain "value". I could have an entire summer of fun w/a Platinum Pass across the Midwest and Ontario going to Cedar Fair amusement parks and tons of other non-amusement park things for the price of a single one week trip to WDW staying in a Deluxe resort. I probably wouldn't even have a tough time booking equivalent levels of accommodations either, and I'd be able to book most of the best restaurants in those cities a day or two beforehand and not 6 months prior. Plus, look, I'm not a Disney blogger fapping to concept art of some unbuilt EPCOT pavilion whilst I complain that it isn't a poor replacement for a science museum anymore. I go to theme parks to primarily ride roller coasters. Who's gonna serve my needs better there?

This.

That was Carnival Sunshine, which was actually a retrofitted boat they renamed.

Cedar Fair has 4 parks in a 5 hour radius of my house. Six Flags has 1. So Cedar Fair.

Unless they're running all three trains that day, in which case, you can't. Considering how demanding the ADA revisions were that came into effect in 2011 on pretty much everything are, I'd be shocked if this was an acceptable loophole. I've literally never seen another business with a similar sign. I'd love to hear a real lawyer take a look at this and give an opinion (and with that; off to message lawyer friends on facebook)....

That seems hard to believe since it would seem to be an obvious violation of ADA law. edit: Just saw the photo on Screamscape. Did they even run this by a lawyer?

Before anyone says, "Oh man, only 85 acres?," please remember that Disneyland Park is approximately 85 acres. This should be adequate for all sorts of big, impressive stuff.

Hopefully the electronics in this one work better than Dorney's. Honestly, most of these rides have been a hot mess. Also LOL, they put a New Zealand jet boat in an old aquatic stunt show theater for a ride? That is amazing.

Could be Turkish/European built stuff. They have a park that's basically a showcase of Zamperla rides which opened up a couple years ago.

Or it could be a retooled Star Tours-esque simulator, which is what it apparently is. I don't have any strong opinions but people on the internet do. I just think its another unique attraction for HKDL that they probably need.

Y'all are sleeping on the knockoff Wonderworks with Dinosaurs on top. Hilarious stuff.

On a continent where taking a train directly to a park is almost expected, Alton Towers' difficulty to reach as a non-driver is a pain in the ass. For me in the US, SDC. Want to fly into Branson? Hand over $600-700. Oh, don't want to do that for Branson, Missouri because you aren't Flanders from the Simpsons? OK. Fly to Kansas City or St. Louis, rent a car, and drive it for several hours. Yeah, that sounds...great.

Short version: owner of Landry's, Tilman Fertitta is of the Fertitta family. If you've ever seen the UFC, you've probably heard of their majority owners, his cousins Lorenzo and Frank III, who also own the Station Casinos company in Vegas. Anyways, Frank Fertitta Sr. came over from Sicily and took over the Maceo crime syndicate after the feds put Sam Maceo in prison. That group was the dominant mob force in Houston and Galveston. You can google plenty more.

Landry's relationship to Galveston is a complex and fascinating story that begins with the fact that it is run by the descendants of gangsters who ran organized crime there, and is not really likely to repeat itself in Long Beach where they have no long held vested interests.

Flying Turns apparently has been certified and spent today cycling private guests of the park. The long national nightmare is over, peeps. Probably as soon as tomorrow, Flying Turns is open to the public.

If the drive is irrelevant to you and your primary/major interest in either are coasters, then obviously Busch Gardens Tampa having more coasters is going to be the better option. If it the drive does matter to you and you are interested in the shows, animal exhibits, food, etc, then Sea World is the better choice.

If you're not "willing" to go along with the concept or theme of the Halloween attraction, then it becomes nothing but a bunch of 19 year olds who listen to Chvrches or Lamb Of God screaming at you. I've had a tough time buying into "it" for years, and really my interest in it just becomes wondering how complex it looks. I won't wait for any mazes.

The Primm casinos have been bought and sold a few times. Supposedly, they run in the green, but their owner has a huge amount of long term debt. The business model is "do everything as cheap as possible" and they make their money in volume from people playing penny slots and $2 table games. This strategy goes down to the rides: cannibalizing the trains for Desperado for parts, for instance. The log flume, as someone asked, once had light guns. They nixed those probably 7-8 years ago. They haven't even put a wrap on that monorail and it has the ownership name from like, 3 managements ago.

I think every coaster requires a month of testing on average. I might be talking out of my butt. Can anyone else offer info? There's no specific demanded time period. Depends on what the park, manufacturer (if involved), and local authorities signing off on the ride want. Ride inspectors may have histories working in the amusement industry or they may be fairly random fire chiefs. Depends on the jurisdiction.

I can't blame anyone for Gwazi's state but the park. The ride was in fine shape even 4 years after opening when I first got to ride it and it didn't start to get "un-rideable" until almost a decade after construction. I imagine they bought the GCI trains to reduce maintenance costs, not to necessarily "fix" the ride. When it turned out it didn't save them that much, Busch Gardens responded not with a full re-tracking or heavy rehab of the attraction, but by closing one of the tracks and building a handicap ramp over the station brakes for it. In retrospect, why be surprised that BGT couldn't properly operate a wood coaster? This is still the same park that still demands the seatbelts get checked before lowering lapbars. If they don't want to maintain it and they prefer to get rid of it, that's outside of my control. This isn't some historic ride we're losing forever. Hopefully after they bulldoze it they build something better than Antarctica in its place. That's all I ask.

Depends entirely on the restraints. If I'm walking down the exit ramp in pain, I don't care what kind of airtime it has.

It was the catwalks that killed her so much in that the coaster car derailed, dropped to something like a 60 degree angle, and smashed people into them, yes.

Curious - is it a thing with "perceived" safety as well? We go on and on about catwalks along the length of the track that really don't do anything - are the catwalks (and Thunder Dolphin's nets as well) there to give riders that perceived feeling of safety even though layouts of modern coasters in Japan aren't really designed differently from other parts of the world? We also don't hear about accidents there unless they're particularly nasty. Even then, some of it is stuff I can't even Google up easily. I remember hearing about a cylinder failure on an S&S Tower over there from back in the 90s and I can't find any reference to it on the net, so it may be imagined. Meanwhile, someone definitely got decapitated at Expoland when the stand-up fell apart, and the now defunct Birdmen at Fuji-Q almost killed a couple people too, and those can easily be confirmed doing searches. One thing is that when incidents happen at these parks, often times the ride will be closed for years before reopening. Remember Steel Dragon 2000?

$30 million will build you pretty much any kind of coaster you want so long as you don't want to build a foam mountain around it. (At least in America. If you're using largely non-union contractors. Which Cedar Fair probably will at Carowinds.)

FTR, I wasn't being serious about bringing back Quake. It might have been good when it operated, but it probably also only operated maybe 10-15% of the time it stood on that location. Green Lantern is horrible because, being that it is designed to flip over and has been altered to not do so, it often ends up dropping riders in Screaming Squirrel-like inverted positions rather unnaturally. And man, I'd rather ride any Top Scan, even the tamest park version, than any ZacSpin. Not even close.