pixelated85

^looks awesome, thanks!

Didn't see any talk on this, maybe I missed it. Anyone know what's happening on the first drop? All I can really piece together is that it at least rotates clockwise.

IMO the MCB had a pretty big impact on what followed. That triple down and the following three hills were for sure lacking the air- it did pick up after that though. I guess I was sad because that set of hills has always been my favorite part of the ride BECAUSE of how much air there was. Hope it gets to run without it in the future. That being said, I felt the first half of the ride was running so much better than it has in the past. It's extremely evident how much work has been done to the ride to smooth it out. The double down into the spaghetti bowl was incredibly intense and I don't remember it ever going through the two 90 degree curves that fast before. We did a front seat ride last night and giggled like geese. I also thought Thunderbird was infinitely better than I originally thought it would be. I've never ridden a B&M wing-whatever and after hearing so many "blah" opinions about them, I really didn't expect much. I was genuinely impressed with how much fun it is. It probably has the smoothest launch of any ride I've been on, and the force of it was crazy. The pre-launch also looks really impressive from the plaza around the ride- the simple lightning effects on the Thunderbird logo along with the fog and rumbling thunder are fantastic. The rest of the ride kept up quite a bit of intensity, especially the two back-to-back turns after the loop. Overall, high fives to the park for adding such a great coaster.

That's fantastic. I'm excited to see the finished rock work and other themeing as well. This park has some serious game.

This ride looks absolutely amazing. So far, it's got my vote for Best Coaster Makeover.

This ride sounds incredible!! I've always admired Phantasialand's ability to make amazing use of a limited amount of space. Speaking of, I apologize if it was posted and I missed it, but is there a map floating around showing the space being used for the ride?

That's definitely an interesting layout. I agree, the dive loop and subsequent roll look fantastic. I'm a big fan of these Gerstlauer launched coasters. With their little 1-2 car trains they almost look cute zipping around the track.

Me.

Sorry for the double post- couldn't figure out how to do two quotes in one post. I would love to hear old stories about the park. I was born in '79 so It'd be cool to hear what it was like around that time.

First, I'm sure everyone will be happy to hear that testing has been going on for a while now. Of course, it has to start with the vehicles just crawling through the course, then add speed, then add the stops/timing, then spinning, etc. Everything is going really well, and the park & designers couldn't be more pleased, from what I've heard! Second, the facade is starting to really look good! Most of the large, approximately 25ft columns are already finished completely with the faux marbling and everything. If anyone is in the park this weekend, you'll notice that some of the paint has run down the facade in a couple places on the front entrance part. Luckily, this was just the base layer and had been painted yesterday morning before the torrential downpours started. I passed the paint crews as they were headed out of the park at around 10:00am. Still, the facade is perfectly on schedule, even with the rainy days here and there. I wanted to say thanks for all the updates. It's really nice of you to keep us all posted. I'm pretty stoked to ride Justice League, and it's cool to hear that things are coming along well.

Are those my only two choices? I'm kind of not really interested in SFFT's Batman. It doesn't seem that exciting to me. Also, the Superman clone looks fun but I still don't feel like it would be a necessary addition. If I had my choice, I'd put Wicked Twister clone in Ninja's spot. That ride never gets old. Obligatory: not sure about the footprint, but a Mega Lite would do wonderfully at SFSTL.

Visited Magic Mountain for the first time since '93 this past Sunday. Some observations: *Tatsu was fun!! I don't seem to come across many positive reviews (or I could very well be overlooking them), but I thought it was fantastic. I also didn't experience any terrible operations in the station. *X2- The first drop and raven turn were awesomeness. What a strange feeling. The following flips and curves were strange but enjoyable. And then... that final raven turn. I seemed to have also overlooked any warnings posted that this would flap my legs violently against the seat bottoms. Talk about unprepared for that moment... I was also in the very last row (or front row? I was in row 7) so maybe that was the case. Regardless, my calves are still sore. Also was not warned that the leg divider on the seat was wide enough for my OBGYN to do an inspection. Would totally ride again though. *Green Lantern- So.. it was me alone on one side, and two small girls on the other side. Needless to say, the weight distribution was off and I spent most of the ride facing the ground. No real flipping that I can recall, and that last drop above the station (face down) seemed to have readjusted my neck. Would like to ride again with a different weight situation going on in the car. *Batman- This one seemed to ride faster to me than the others, although everyone's said that about each particular Batman at some point. Maybe it was the furious dry heat, who knows. Had a ton of fun on it. *Superman- A bit forgettable, sadly. Was expecting more perhaps. Having grown accustomed to backwards Freeze, perhaps the backwards-up-the-tower thing isn't as crazy to me as it is to others. Not a bad ride though, just not terribly exciting. *Ninja- my favorite surviving suspended coaster. Love the backseat on this one. *Apocalypse- hmm. The first drop and subsequent airtime hill were fantastic. The rest was kinda meh. Still weird to see a woodie with that level of theming. *Lex Luthor- woot! Love a good free fall tower, and this was no exception. Definitely my favorite free fall ride. *Full Throttle- scored a front seat ride and loved it!! Got some killer air going over the top hat, and some equally killer hang time through the loop. "Please secure all loose articles" is no joke. *Goliath- The helix made me see stars for the first time ever on a ride. Good times. The rest of the ride was a little boring. I've ridden Titan in Texas and, surprise, shared the same sentiments. *Scream- The poor bastard child of the B&M coasters that only gets mentioned when one's talking about parking lots. It was ok. *Riddler- Not so bad, but a bit forgettable. Definitely smoother than the other two big stand-ups out there. *Viper- got headbanging in strange places where it shouldn't exist. Still confused. *Revolution- sigh. Those trims everywhere are SO necessary. I mean, I'm certain I would flying to my death if they didn't completely stop me like twice during the ride. I thought we were gonna valley after threading the loop. All in all, despite the fact that I had not yet adapted to the arid climate and had managed to sweat out every ounce of moisture in my body (and probably some of yours as well), I had a great time and will gladly go back for another round, perhaps on a cooler fall day.

Pot, meet Kettle. If this person is expected to monitor his posts so they aren't repetitive to you, shouldn't you be offering the rest of us the same consideration? For real dude.

^Good to know! If I recall correctly, I heard that Grooverider rolled through town not too long ago. I really should've gone now that I think about it. He always did put on a great show. All this talk is gonna make me go bust out my old Metalheadz collections and start driving the neighbors nuts.

I do . Actually I'll clarify- I spoke fluent d&b as a teenager going to parties, but I couldn't tell you the name of any new or popular current d&b djs. I still bust out the old mix tapes every now and again to reminisce- Odi, LTJ Bukem, 187... good times.

My friend and I were one of the "chosen few" that got picked for the marathon last year, although that one lasted 9 hours (45 mins per coaster, with 15 mins in between to rest/pee/get to the next coaster). I'll see how quickly I can sum up that experience. The teams were all given a starting coaster, and would basically rotate around the park clockwise. Our group- Team Rust, or Team "Patina" as we decided to call ourselves- started out on the mine train. Great fun, as it gave us time to get to know each other, have chats on the lift hills, do each other's nails, etc. We noticed about 20 mins in that someone had already puked on the Ninja and they had pulled everyone off to clean up. They then decided in fairness to pull all the teams off all the coasters while they cleaned it up, so that ultimately everyone would be riding for the same amount of time. This quickly became the theme of the evening. I mean... the puking just became rampant. So many people, so unprepared for this type of event. In the 45 mins we were at Batman, I think we rode it maybe 4 times, as we spent the majority of the time on the platform waiting as they cleaned up puke as far as the eye could see. It was ridiculous. At the end of the event, our team tied with another for having the most members standing (13 out of 16, I believe). They gave all of us passes for this year. They then did the grand prize drawing for the trip to DC, and my friend won- and ended up taking me with her! *high five* It was the hardest I'd ever worked to compete in anything. You don't realize just how bad it's really gonna be. Our team was in it to win it, and we didn't have anyone bow out until we hit the Boss (we did have a few people puking between rides on Mr. Freeze and every ride thereafter, but they all jumped right back on). It was surreal, and I'm not 100% sure I'd do it again, but it was a story to tell the grandkids for sure.

Looks like the pacing through most of the ride seems to be quite faster than the other wingriders. Maybe it's the animation, but I hope it turns out to run that fast through the course. Very stoked for this ride.

Today's Holiblog post is quite amusing... and relatively revealing. "I cannot express to you just how huge this responsibility is. It is One. Big. Thing. I repeat: One. Big. Thing. This secret is getting harder and harder to contain (thankfully we only have less than two weeks now). I will say this, though: this is our biggest investment to date. By far. And it’s One. Big. Thing. Not a new section with a bunch of new rides, just one massive piece of awesome. When you finally find out what it is, you’re going to flip. Wait, I won’t say that." *high five, guys*

I agree to an extent with you on that. What were Batman and Freeze though.... they were CLONES, this is where SFSTL started getting screwed. Now, I completely understand that almost EVERY Sis Flags park received a BATMAN at some point, but I have ALWAYS thought, that FREEZE was the biggest waste for Thunder Island, that island could have held something SOOOO much better than Freeze I would disagree with Freeze being a waste of that space. If I put on my "GP" helmet and look at it objectively, Freeze is a really intense, fun ride packed into that small footprint. Being that it's 15+ years old, I can't really think of anything that existed back then that would've been a better choice. To add to that, I think that 5 year period where they added Batman, Freeze and the Boss was the best thing that's happened to the park. Before that, we were rockin like 3 adult-sized coasters. Growing up I didn't think I'd ever see a ride even close to resembling Freeze coming to our park.

Good point. Would you guys recommend I wait to see what the crowds are like before buying or just do it online before we head over there? And if I do it before am I able to add her onto it using my "Add Someone to FP for Free" coupon? edit: also thanks for your insight, dudes! A friend and I visited the park for the first time last year, on the last operating day of the season. I'm sure this was an extreme example, but it was singlehandedly the most crowded non-Disney park experience I've had. I knew it would be insane beforehand, so since we had season passes I splurged on the gold flash pass for us. Well worth the price! It took the wait times for most of the coasters down to about fifteen minutes each. The regular queues were mostly around a two hour wait for all of the coasters. Managed to ride everything except Batman (didn't need to, wasn't credit whoring), and got a few re-rides on El Toro and Nitro. The two things I took away from my visit there- 1) El Toro and Kingda Ka were the two standout rides. Everything else seemed to be filler. Nitro was good but not great. 2) There's a certain mentality in that particular part of the northeast that I had to accept. It was very "me first, get out of my way, I'll run you over". Not the most pleasant experience, but we managed to get through the day without any casualties, so...

Kinda hope they didn't go for a downsize. I really dig the original layout- it seemed fresh and original while still unmistakeably GCI. If this isn't the case, maybe this was one of the proposed layouts that ended up on the page instead of the final version?

Wait, did they redesign the ending for Viper or is this a different coaster altogether? What am I missing?

*golf clap* Somebody take Helix out for a drink, let's get to the bottom of this.

Speaking of which Source: The unofficial fb-page See! Look at all that sexiness. I wonder if Helix has a girlfriend yet...

That helix before the second launch looks amazing. Very aesthetically pleasing. Super stoked to see this ride in action.