chadster

It's a built in exercise program. Just think if Cedar Point had that type of program, all coaster nerds would then be forced to lose weight, or eat more! I spent 5 years in hospitality management, and finding competent staff was my biggest issue, the property practically ran itself, but just needed someone to give a hoot about it. As frustrating as it was for our guests, it was twenty times more frustrating for me to have to continually apologize to guests and discipline/hire/terminate employees, it really really sucked which as much as I hated to leave what I loved, for my sanity, I scooted. Nonetheless, I am really enjoying your perspective on the trip, I followed the posts that were out there and while they were very entertaining, I love getting "the rest of the story" Thanks!

^^agreed. If if you add an extra hour on for Harry Potter, you can still ride and do everything in both parks in the 8 or 9 hours they will be open, maybe three or four times in row even. I don't think I even got off the dragons on a day in Feb this year, totally dead and against the rules so say the ride ops, but they didn't care as I was it on what was known as Fire.

^^Yeah I figured I was a little late, but when I saw you still had high opinons of it recently I thought I might try to convert you back to a win7 man, But hey, I 100% agree that Win7 has made life more difficult, I have spent many months on finding a way to image 1500 nodes with win7 without any issues consistantly, and today, I hit pay dirt and a few items (and for that, I will treat myself to the Kemah boardwak and Johnson Space Center this weekend) They have taken away many options and require various methods of sysprep and whatnot, and jeez, I don't have all year to figure this stuff out! The 32bit did come from a post on around page 9 or so while i was skimming and glad you tried the 64bit and it never ceases to amaze me at what will and won't work with these things. Although I did enjoy watching your opinon go down hill, it was almost like the joke about the couple that moves up north and writes the diary: day 1 love it up here the air is great, day 4 snow!, day 6 snow and I'm sholving, day 15 more @$#@$^ snow, day 28, more snow, and I hurt my #$^@#^ back, day 45, I'm packing up and moving away from this #@$^%%# Anyway, I know what a pain it is to go back from one OS to another and I wish you the best on that. XP is much more stable for many applications and is way more friendly with hardware. We have CS5 on 32bit workstations (yeah, I know, 32 bit, not my call) and it's solid as a rock. Good luck and if you decided to make the jump again and run into issue, hit me up! *edit* i am hearing win 8 is in development, might be 18 to 24 months before we see a rc version

^^honestly, it almost sounds like your registry has become corrupt or a device driver that is fouled, i'm guessing a corrupt registry or installation. If it's happening in Adobe Premier and your email program as well, I would lean more towards an OS corruption. If it was an upgrade from Vista, there might be some hangover there. Without physically seeing the suspect, I would start with a nice system repair which can be accessed from the install disk(if you have it) or the manufacture's partition (if it's still there) The repair menu is actually fairly nice, once your reboot the system and select boot to disk, click next on the first screen, at the bottom of the second screen is a repair function, choose which one you like the best (complete do over, repair sys files, etc) and I would almost bet it would fix it. I have 64bt Win7 Pro and Enterprise, both to this date have performed well, also have office 2010 on one of the boxes including the laptop I'm using now with no issues. Another thing you can try before a repair is to run said program in XP mode. Right click the shortcut, properties, compatibility(insert joke here) and select run in windows XP SP3 mode. If that stops the adobe issue, then a reinstall or a reset to factory defaults of ie8 (tools, options, advanced, reset) might cure your ailment. Bottom, line, I hate having to troubleshoot microsofts stuff, but thats life for me. Glad to hear the Mac is working well at the moment, we have exactly two of them in our organization and the internet browsing on them is horrible, takes forever to bring up a webpage even on a direct connect 10meg cox circuit(for testing to rule out our web filters) MAC's tend to be much stronger for graphics and video, which is what they are used for with us. *edit* just seen you installed the 32bit version of windows 7 with 6gb of RAM, you will not be able to use all 6 GB of ram, the most you will actually be able to use is 3. The 64 bit version of windows 7 will run quicker and allow you to actually use all 6gb of ram which could be another reason you are crashing. Had I noticed that when I first *skimmed* the post, I might not have wrote all that above, but maybe someone will find is usefull Unfortunatley to switch to 64bit, you will lose everything. If you have an extra HDD laying around, you can always image that and go forth with testing out with your programs, just a suggestion.

I will laugh if they put in a wacky worm....

i suppose you could always wear around one of those nifty "you must be this tall to ride this ride" shirts, see this way you have two outs, one, you can talk about coasters, the other, you can talk about your uhumm, "ride" As such, no need for a coaster club except for maybe TPR

computer nerd for big brother.

I should also say that from a file strucutre stand point and the abilites to copy and manipulate files are vastly improved over XP. Wish I would've read this thread sooner, Robb, might have been able to help you out on that crashing thing.

I've been working with Windows 7 for almost a year in one form or another (yes, we developers get stuff early) and I have to say, while some things are better, and for me it is stable, XP is still the better products in regards to deployment. I have not yet in six months been able to consitantly image and delpoy Windows 7 in a manner that does not take 2 to 4 hours a machine. They have taken away the ability to copy over a default profile, the only support way is via sysprep which does all sorts of other wonderful things to your OS, and when you are talking deployment to 1500 nodes, ouch. Bottom line, for deployment purposes, it sucks major donkey doo. For instance, I just imaged a sysprepped machine, and bam, no active partition, thank you microsoft! (yes, I can fix it and get it up and running, but damn man, lets make it easier)

pink=chang

Just thought I would take a moment and provide a brief update on a letter I received. I had written BGW to let them know of the wonderful time I had at the park especially on the coaster tour. Today when I checked the mail, I had revived a letter from the Vice President of park operations, Mark Pauls. In the letter is very appreciative of the time taken to write the review and to write to the park and let them know of my experiences and says he has shared my comments were shard with their leadership team members. I felt that this a class act that the Vice President of Park Operations would take the time to send to me a personal letter via U.S. Mail. This just reenforces the experience I had and the quality of their staff and commitment to their guests. I can say I will definitley revisit this park when I return to the area.

wow, we had a bardge crash into a bridge on 1-40 many years ago, caused the bridge to crash into the river. Many people lost their lives as a result (they drove off the end of the missing bridge and landed in the river) Sad situation.

Your very welcome. Unfortunately I did drive back and forth that much and it had a lot to do with the parks operating schedules at the time and I made a few adjustments based on my last minute ambitions. I skipped Knoebels because of their schedule at the time and distance from where I was and where I needed to go, plus, I am hopeful that they will get the Flying Turns open by next year and will do another trip to the area hitting up Holiday World, the Dells, Darien Lake, Knoebels, and whatever else I can get myself into I think I read your post about going out that direction. If I where you, I would head out to KD on day one and BGW after that, then start your way back up to PA and over to the point and not look back. The back of the park at KD will be mostly dead with the longest wait being for Volcano. Intrimidator's line goes pretty fast with both trains, maybe 45 minutes if you are at the entrance to the line) The coaster tour at BGW lasts until about 11-11:30, and if you stay until 3 or 4pm (after being their at 7:45 you will welcome it) you should make it back to KD in about 75 minutes or less. I see now that you are going to run into the same issues I had with parks not being open during the week which takes it's toll (literally in some cases!) One full day at the point may be plenty and you should be able to ride everything, but the park will leave you with wanting to go back for a second day. Kings Island has a get in early pass for Dimanondback and The Beast if you are a plat pass holder, so be sure to take advantgae of that if possible. After that, 4-5 hours should be plenty of time to ride everything a time or maybe two or three. One thing you might want to consider is coming back part ways Wed. evening. If you get to Baltimore too early, there is an outlet mall about 1.5 miles from the car rental return place (I would not reccomend going into DC with less than 6 hours before needed arrival at the airport, set yourself up for missed flights) One thing to also mention is that if you don't want to go back to KD for a second half day, Virginia Beach is nice and only about 45 miles for BGW, traffic tho can be crazy. Hope that's not too overwhelming and helps somewhat in your trip planning. I ended up cutting out three parks, Coney Island, Darien Lake (cut out before I got there because of travel distance) and Knoebels.

The observer tour doesn't allow for you to go to the top of Griffon or ride any of the coasters. It's strictly a walk around and look at the coasters and maintenance areas. The participant tour is really good and I highly suggest it.

After recently completing a 16 day east coast journey myself, I must say you are very ambitious with your schedule. Traffic will be your biggest enemy. I agree with Thrillrider, take the coaster tour at BGW, I did, and was very happy with it. Try your best to group everything in the same area as possible like Hershey/Dorney/Kennywood/Knoebels/CedarPoint, and then coming back hit the stuff you missed. Avoid back tracking at all cost, it'll wear you down and drain your wallet. I back tracked a few days due to park hours and wished I hadn't. One big piece of advice, search for alternates over the turnpikes. The turnpikes were hectic busy, not that great of a road and with traffic jams at the toll booths could add time to your travels. The alternates don't take too much longer and can save you as much as $50 (total) throughout PA. Your best friend will be a paper map, pinpoint the parks with their current operating hours on it and go with the flow. P.S. I would rearrange some things and head back Wed. from Cinci, that drive back will be longer than you think and you don't want to miss your flight. You could hit up SFA on Thrusday and then spend more time at KD on your flight in. That's what I did.

Does mean streak even have that exciting of a layout compared to the newer wooden coasters? If compared to El Toro or Prowler, no, but, I think it could hold it's own if it were just more enjoyable in the comfort department. Heck, thick padded seats would do wonders.

Looks like they have some quality credits here. Thanks for the photos.

^^ Yeah X was out of commission last year, but they were able to get the part in and the ride opened back up around a month ago I'm told. The tower here was probably in the same league as Celebration City, about 100ft Unfortunately there were a few rides I didn't capture. Hawk, Log Flume, Bumper Cars, and Kiddie Land (4 rides) When I go to new parks I try to capture everything but don't always succeed. ( or remember, sometimes the movable scenery distracts me) Glad I was able to post stuff to give you a better idea of what the park is like. They've done a nice job on it and deserves some love.

From Houston that is quite the drive. MS is a smaller park and good for a weekend getaway, especially if you mix the lake into it. If you don't go in the summer, I would probably say I wouldn't make the trip given the distance you are from it as the water park is a great perk and makes it worth while. I know I might be dancing around a yes or no answer and if driving that distance doesn't bother you, I'd say make the trip. If you lived a little closer(250 miles or less), I would say definitely go, it's a nice, clean, peaceful park. Hope that somewhat helps. edit: I just checked mapquest, it shows about a 7 hour drive from Houston. If you are looking to get away, this is a nice part of Arkansas, and like I said before, mix in the lake and the downtown area of Hot Springs and it would be a nice little getaway. Just be sure to go when the water park is open to get the full effect.

I didn't see anything anywhere about free soda. I know that Lake Compounce was offering Free Soda when I was there earlier this year, and that was a first for me. Magic Springs did offer a souviner cup for like 7.00 and then refills were 1.50.

^^or replacing Mean Streak, actually, I would just like to see them retrack MS and put some decent trains on it.

Yep. I agree. SFNO has a better chance of re-opening next year.

X Coaster should be on the bucket list, that's for sure. I just don't see it as being a big draw to the park. Basically, once you go over the top, it shoots you down through the station up the front tower, then back through the station and up the rear tower, then up the front tower where it breaks, attaches to the chain, and brings you back to safety. Fun ride.

You might need a second job for that!

Arkansas Twister. Nice out and back woodie.