BrandonR

For those of you outside the DFW area that aren't seeing the gem of a commercial the park is airing for SkyScreamer, I finally caught it and recorded it: It's horribly cheesy but it still makes me smile, particularly the guy's evil laugh.

Dunno why Shock Wave is closed but I've heard it'll be a while before it reopens.

After 2 separate attempts and failures over Memorial Day weekend, I finally got to ride SkyScreamer today. Line was fairly backed up but made it through in an hour. The height really didn't bother me any so it for me it was a peaceful (albeit windy) ride. Of course people around me were freaking out, especially due to the chairs twisting 90 or more degrees. Playing "Come Fly with Me" over the speakers during the ride was a fun touch. I'll have pictures up on my site later today or tomorrow.

I really appreciated Google's translation of the first video's title: "Which you put in your pants, or ride?" As for Shock Wave I have no idea why it's closed. I noticed it was empty when I drove by Memorial Day. I wouldn't think it's the yearly track rehab, as thats typically done at the end/beginning of the season...

Yes Big Bend's footers can be found there. I have a picture near the end of this article: http://www.guidetosfot.com/features/rideretrospective/bigbend/

I suggest taking the middle seat on La Vibora. If you get an one of the front or rear seats you basically sit right over the axle and your ass takes a pounding during the block brakes (assuming you're not into that sorta thing...) Not riding the Texas Giant is not an option as mentioned above. I'm conflicted on which seat to tell you to ride in. The back is the best especially on the first drop but once you ride there everything else is kinda bleh so I suggest riding in the front first (for some crazy airtime on the double-ups) and then the back for the rest. Since they removed the over-the-shoulders from Freeze I wouldn't say there are any particularly bad or rough rides at the park (Judge Roy Scream can be painful depending on how dry the weather has been) so definitely plan on riding everything you can! Hope you enjoy yourself...

Yeah, can anyone confirm if they ever added dedicated front/back-row lines for NTAG? To me, not being able to pick your seats was the downfall of the continuous-loading system.

I always just assumed "biometric == fingerprint reader." What exactly are the biometric readers taking if it's not your fingerprint?

Great pics! As painful as it is to say, this ride will have to try hard not to whoop NTAG. Too bad they weren't building this thing when I was going to UTSA for those 2 years. Hmm, actually no... My grades would probably have been even worse.

Nice to see the park focusing on capital improvements for once in addition to the new ride. But now I have a bunch of extra work to update all my site's dining location pages. And was Newman's really listed as corn dog stand 1 on the map or something? Bizarre. "Stand 2" would have to refer to the Tower location.

And short of getting his life/medical history, how is a ride op supposed to make such a decision to let someone ride who is missing their extremities? They're ride operators, not doctors, and they need to be consistent in following straight-forward safety policies. They made the safe, conservative judgment call which is the better decision to make when dealing with guest safety.

If ever there was an element that can make me crap my pants, that would be it.

Looks like SFoT is getting sued by a man without hands for the park not letting him ride Aquaman. Hopefully it'll get thrown out. Unfortunately I think a lot of people assume that because a lot of people ride rides with their hands up that they're not necessary to ride. But you still need to be able to support your upper body in case the forces overwhelm you, and it sounds like he wouldn't have been able to do such a thing. And I just feel bad for the ride ops. I've had to deny people from riding in similar situations and it felt horrible. Not to mention a pretty critical decision for a part-time teenager to make in the heat of the moment. Perhaps the park should get a very clear and unified disabled rider policy together? If I recall it's somewhat jumbled and varies widely from ride to ride which can probably improve somewhat.

Now that makes sense. Looking at NTAG you can see there isn't a top layer of steel: http://rcdb.com/2.htm?p=29291 iRat on the other hand is different. It doesn't have the bolt plates (lol) and will have a top layer of steel added: Thanks for the sanity check. I was almost positive NTAG didn't have additional bolted-on sheet metal.

Steel wheels are going to eat at the track so it's going to require replacement eventually. RMC seems to have accounted for this with their topper track as it appears the top layer of steel is fairly easily replaceable. I think for the I-box track there's no serviceable components other than replacing the entire section of welded track.

The park sent out an email update about Texas Skyscreamer. Some interesting stats/technical details in there too. Sounds like vertical progress will start in early Spring so a Memorial Day opening isn't outside the realms of possibility.

I don't see it happening, given they still haven't started tower construction (as far as I've heard). They can probably build the thing by opening but testing can take a while. And regardless, the park seems to prefer April-May openings, probably because they have something new to advertise for Labor Day weekend and the beginning of summer.

Thats better. I don't mind that at all. PLUS pockets for your phone! Yeah, since the pockets are just mesh you could actually start a recording on your phone before zipping it up and get a free on-ride video of yourself.

Actually I got word that the park is already planning to add separate lines for the front/back so that removes my biggest concern about the whole thing... What I don't get is why they don't just dispatch the train after the last lapbar is checked instead of letting it creep to the end of the station and then letting it go. Or maybe they can?

Went to the park earlier today (which was the last day of the 2012 season). Light crowds when I got there around noon but they started to pick up by the time I left (around 2). Finally got to experience the New Texas Giant's loading procedure too. I also took a video of the new loading procedure (see below). My take: it feels faster, but I'm still not totally convinced it actually is. The pouches seem to do the most in speeding things up as most people don't need to go to the cubbies to store small things. They still need to add separate lines for the first and last cars to give riders some choice, and I see this could very easily be incorporated with the new loading scheme. So is it faster? I'm not sure, but since the line moves at a slower, albeit more continuous pace, it feels faster. I do have another theory: since the train is continuously moving it almost makes everyone loading/unloading hustle a bit faster than when a train is just sitting in the station. That in itself could create faster loading. [youtu_be] [/youtu_be]

Agreed. To me, Giant is bleh (relatively speaking) anywhere but the back (I'm just not a fan of the front's ejector airtime), and taking away my choice to sit where I want to after waiting in line is ridiculous.

This is like saying Disney or Universal shouldn't soft-open to work out the kinks of their new rides before the crowds start flocking en masse. The park shouldn't test out a new loading system on a packed day, no, but they have every right to do it on a less busy day - it gives them a chance to work out the kinks while seeing how the system handles an average crowd level, after which they can decide whether it's practical to make the change permanent. Well perhaps I understated the crowds a bit. There was still a pretty good size crowd for Holiday in the Park. And I'm all for soft openings but honestly as slow as the trains were being dispatched, it's like they had came up with this plan 5 minutes prior to park opening. I questioned whether the ride was open or not several times as I walked through the queue since no trains were being dispatched. And like I said, during this time of the year, there are several private parties that they could have done the testing during instead of upsetting regular guests.

With as slow as trains were getting dispatched yesterday, they were essentially stacking with one train. What's sad was the park wasn't even that crowded yesterday. Titan was maybe a 5-train wait with its two trains running. During the 15 minutes I waited in line for Giant, the only reason the line ever moved was due to more and more people leaving the line. It's sad when the general public starts recognizing how horribly inefficient operations are to about face and leave the line (and if you know how long Giant's line is, it's no simple feat). I'm all for experimenting new ideas to increase efficiency, but how about when the park's not open and not making paying guests guinea pigs? There's plenty of private party days stuff like that can get ironed out during...

All I know it I stood in line for Giant about 15 minutes before leaving yesterday. One train operation on the most popular ride in the park on a weekend? Are you kidding me? And to top it off this new loading scheme must have been slowing things down even further, as there was consistently at LEAST a 5 minute delay between the train arriving at the station and it leaving again.