DirkFunk

A moment of real talk: If you are paying $400 for a cruise in the summer, you are taking an older mass market line ship to the Bahamas. Period. And if you are doing that, the differences between the RCCL ships and Carnival's ships are minor. They are older, smaller ships that are equally maintained, almost equally staffed, feature food that is effectively the same, and have roughly the same number of activities and public space. The differences are largely cosmetic. Probably the most obvious one is that Carnival has more balconies on their Fantasy class vessels because they tacked them on a couple years ago in a strange jerryrigged sort of way. If you're looking to be told a specific boat or line for that trip, honestly, I wouldn't bother. What you should do is this: A) Who offers you the most room for your money? Sovereign class (which is what you would be on with RCCL) has some of the smallest cabins at sea, particularly with the inside cabins. Carnival does have plenty of small ones in this category as well. Note that the difference is not likely to be hundreds of dollars, but perhaps probably 30/40/50 at most. But then, if your budget is $400, that's a chunk. B) Look at the itinerary, and then check http://cruisett.com/ports.php?PortID=455&date=40 to see who else is there with you. If you can find a boat that happens to be at Nassau or Freeport by itself, that may be worth paying a premium. On the other hand, getting an 116 square foot inside on a 20 year old liner that ends up sharing its ports with 2-3-4 other ships could be a recipe for misery. With those boats, you are not going to see or feel a difference. Seriously.

Excellent stuff. The most interesting thing about the park for me: the asado. See, boomerangs and german built flats are a dime a dozen. Grilled meats over open wood flame in a country renowned for being the beef capital of the world; that is something else entirely.

This is seriously the best off season in years and years and years. All the new teams entering the sport give it the flavor I, frankly, was missing when teams like Arrows and Minardi checked out. If you think I mean that I like crappy teams...yes, I do. C'mon, while there's been some wildly exciting moments over the last few years (generally when it rains), I think back to what the best memories are, and often its when the lousy teams hang up big results: Force India and STR at Monza, Sutil racing hard in the top 4 at Monaco before being wrecked by Kimi, Takuma Sato overtaking Alonso at Montreal...now with more questionable teams and more unknown drivers coming up from F3, who knows what will happen next year. Well, aside from Button getting owned badly by Hamilton and Vettel winning the title.

1) Golden Horse begins to make deals to deal rides outside of Asia, perhaps even to the US or Canada. Cost is a huge factor in this for a number of struggling parks. Next stop: patent lawyers! 2) More parks close, maybe even a few major regional themers in the pile. 3) China's boom slows not because their economy is near collapse, but because they are beginning to reach a saturation point in their major population centers. Its time to start looking now more at there being shifts in the industry there similar to how American parks have gone from picnic parks run by railroads to cartoon and fairytale parks to regional themers based on Disneyland, except perhaps in reverse.

Courts are not in the position of determining market value (thank god), only if offenses are committed. If there's no evidence pointing at collusion, there's no reason not to allow the sale to go through, assuming the sale gets approved by stockholders. No evidence of collusion and no larger offers = that's what Cedar Fair may actually be worth. One of the arguments against selling now is that the economy will rebound in 2010, and the value of Cedar Fair will go up. That's a big if. If Cedar Fair bets on black again and the economy comes up double zeros for the 3rd year in a row, it could be ruinous.

In the case of the SS United States, its worth mentioning that it was never a cruise ship. It was an ocean going passenger liner that's been mothballed for about 40 (!!!) years. The idea of renovating it into a Hawaiian liner was quite a nice one, but no plans were really ever concrete regarding its conversion. Can't exactly blame Apollo for not investing heavily in that.

The attendance of 2 million may have been seen as "acceptable" to those on the outside, but that Six Flags sold the park for a $70 million dollar loss (their words from the 2003 Annual Report) tells me things weren't that rosy. The 2003 season for Six Flags, FWIW, was projected in the shareholder letter to see a 3.5-4% increase in attendance, and instead SFWOA saw a 7% drop. The first year under Cedar Fair was, of course a disaster of biblical proportions, but it doesn't undermine why that place ended up being sold so cheaply (as Cedar Fair itself was now).

But they didn't sell it in 2000. It was sold in 2004 after 3 subsequent years of steep falling attendance. If it was "doing well", Cedar Fair likely wouldn't have had the option to buy it.

I'm wondering what standard you're using to say Six Flags Worlds of Adventure was "doing well".

Ehhh, I just can't get upset about it. Its like complaining that Taco Bell is mexican food dumbed down and made safe for Americans. Its a prepackaged fortune cookie they probably buy by the case. Maybe the ones with Spanish on the back were on discount? LOL

I'm just sayin' what I've been told about Kinzel. Don't kill the messenger. Yeah, they're a private equity firm, like Blackstone, Carlyle Group, Colony Capital, etc. The idea is that they can finance aspects of an undervalued business that it by itself cannot (debt, expansion, whatever), and then over the long run, they can make boatloads of money.

Its a not so big secret that Kinzel is likely retiring after next year.

NCL has seen some changes, but I don't think they're any that are outside the norms of the industry for a multinational company like that. Some ships were transferred to it from Star Cruises. One of the US flagged ships was taken out of the Hawaii routes. The SS United States wasn't refurbed. Harrah's has only expanded over the last few years. They just announced plans to buy Planet Hollywood in Vegas, and have done a made a number of purchases in the last 36 months in smaller markets. I don't know what to expect, but I'll hope for the best. As far as I'm concerned, this might be a good thing for Knotts in terms of re-establishing its roots.

This is a pretty easy one to figure out; The guy singularly responsible for Spain's overwhelming current interest in F1 is driving one of Ferrari's Carbon Fiber cigarette packs next year. Like any good capitalist, one must go to where the people are. Of course, if he ends up not doing so well, I imagine the project might not either.

As a dude with opinionz 4 u, I think its well intentioned, but the fear I have is that the incentive for keeping the weight off after the program ends doesn't exist. At this point, many insurance companies are willing to cover gastric bypass/lap band surgeries because weight loss is enough of an incentive for them to cut future costs by spending thousands now. The issue with those surgeries has always been failure rates, and it will likely be that way for some time into the future. It doesn't really cut to the heart of the problem. If people are conditioned to eat terrible food in monster portions their whole life, they may be willing to "go on a diet" and cease doing it for a few weeks/months, but lifestyle changes that are permanent are a whole different deal. Burgers, fries, and Coke are popular with people, in spite of being artery clogging, fat gaining, etc. because they taste good on a primal level. There was something on ESPN.com (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hruby/091014&sportCat=mlb) recently about stadium food and not just how bad it is for you, but how so many variants have appeared in recent years. You can't merely sell fries at a ballpark anymore, because they have to be covered in meat and cheese to appeal to prospective buyers. My viewpoint is that people will stop eating like this when they can no longer afford eating like this, just as they cut back on driving when they could no longer afford it. The threats of heart disease, diabetes, and sleep apnea couldn't do it, but when Whoppers end up being $12, you'll see people change their minds.

I am also not Robb and getting to this very, very late. If you're new to cruising or not, probably going to somewhere like Cruisecritic is going to be the best resource for you. It may be dense to start with; people there are as fanatical about cruising as we all are about amusement parks. But then, who better to get advice from than the serious hobbyist and traveller? I'd say this to you though; Like, a water coaster or a zip line on a ship is cool, but how much time are you going to spend on the boat? And when you're on it, do you really plan to be spending the majority of your time playing in the arcade or climbing rockwalls versus eating, going to the spa, relaxing with a book on your balcony/on deck, sitting in the room, etc? Just because you may not be familiar with some of the brands in cruising doesn't make them substandard, and some of the more well known ports to travellers are actually less desirable. Educate yourself, as with anything.

D'oh! You guys are right. In the "What I really meant to say" file, I really meant to say something about the greater issues in that part of the world. There's a lot of projects stalling out and parks dying, whether its in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, whatever. Someone pointed out the F1 race; Bahrain and Qatar have big time racing too, but the spectator numbers are pretty lousy now after big starts. Even with the oil money, you gotta wonder how long they'll keep it up.

The simple answer is "yes". The situation can be put like this; if its open now, it might not be soon, and if it isn't done yet, it probably never will be. I miss Dubaidave's enduring positive attitude towards the projects there, but the stories of late from there regarding treatment of workers and such are mighty sad. I, for one, am interested to see how long it takes the Ferrari Experience to end up like HRP.

Amusement parks are way outside their core competency. With that said, I don't see them pushing hard to replace management and install their own folks unless they see the parks as a financial drain. I wouldn't expect any drastic changes any time soon.