Ed Farmer

Apart from the aforementioned minor track differences, when you see enough of both types it won't be hard to peg the manufacturer based on the ride's style/layout. There are exceptions, but for the most part Arrow seems to have had simpler designs.

Very happy to see the Iron Wolf station house & queues will be re-purposed. I've spent a good chunk of time traversing those paths over over the years. My favorite part of Superman Ultimate Flight a few doors down is maneuvering through Shockwave's comically long queue. Unlike SUF, luckily, odds are good that the ride itself (Goliath) will serve as the focal point of the experience.

X-Flight is the better ride- it isn't even the worst B&M coaster at the park it's at; that would be Superman Ultimate Fluff. Despite that, I would go with Gatekeeper as the better of the two, purely because the more compact layout of X-Flight lends itself better to being cloned and strewn about/littering the (SF) chain.

Little Dipper and Dark Knight Coaster (wild mouse in a box) at SFGAm. Elsewhere, Dare Devil Dive (SFOG) and Superman Ultimate Flight (SFOG and SFGAdv), after having already ridden the local S:UF at SFGAm and knowing full well what to expect (much baddity).

Gatekeeper?

Hopefully they'll keep playing like they have in the last 3 games and that awkward conversation between Thibodeau and the front office can be averted entirely.

Anfernee Hardaway, Grant Hill, Derrick Rose. Realistically, the Bulls weren't going to seriously contend for a championship this year, and I don't think he was the piece to build around anyway, but he would have been 1a to whoever 1 would have been. Now, this version of the Bulls (2010-present/Tom Thibodeau era) is set to get parted and scrapped to facilitate a rebuild- with no guarantee that Rose will ever be the same player he was upon his return. The maddening thing about this is that one of their greatest strengths (Tom Thibodeau) will hinder that process. His teams are unbelievably well-coached and will probably be good for a 4-6 seed in the playoffs, which effectively kills any chance of securing a higher pick in the draft. Not good enough to win, not bad enough for the consolation prize. Probably the worst place an NBA team can find itself in. The other thing to consider is that Rose was cleared well before the end of last season by his doctors as the final part of the rehab for the ACL injury. The idea was that while he wouldn't come back and light the world on fire, it would strengthen both his injured knee, and acclimate the other one to minimize his favoring and overexerting it. He very clearly wasn't himself yet in this young season, and the point was to get that out of the way last year.

Voyage, by light years.

That would be awful. The topper track that they started (and not sure if they finished- I last visited near the end of 2012 season) was the ideal solution IMO, and should be the extent of any Rocky-Mountaining for Ga. Cyclone. It wasn't too long ago that it was far and away the best of the remaining stateside Cy-Clones, original included. Patch it up a bit and it'll be as good as anything that would replace it. If anything, they should try Rocky-Mountaining Superman. ;- )

Doozy of a trade in the AL- Fielder and cash to Texas for Ian Kinsler. Looks smart from both sides, but I think Detroit comes out on top here. Regardless, this was one of those trades that will make you stop what you're doing when you first hear it. I was washing dishes- glad I wasn't in the middle of trying to land a commercial airliner or helping someone give birth to a child.

Since birth, unfortunately. On the bright side, the first drop is untainted by this, so all who ride it in row 9 can bask in it's glory.

They are. I was a bit disappointed to hear that MLB decided to move them over to the AL rather than Colorado or Arizona. For a team that made it to the World Series within the last decade, they are a sad sight.

Well, hey, Anthony Hopkins just won an Oscar in 1991 for his take on Hannibal Lecter. They probably just want to capitalize on that...strike while the iron is hot.

Kind of surprised that they're going with Cannibal as the name. At the very least, no one will accuse them of being unoriginal.

Enjoy this video of Blue Fire topless test runs.

Good thing that this has never ever happened before in the history of business.

It's always nice to see another GIB being built.

Those would be my top two as well. The GIBs seem to enjoy a somewhat favorable opinion from the internet coaster people (apart from their reliability), but Georgia's Ninja clearly doesn't. I've probably logged 30-40 laps on Ninja since my first time out to SFOG in 2001, and not one of them was anywhere near as bad as you'd think they would be if you've read what the aforementioned internet coaster people have to say about it. Nice pacing throughout it's course, and just the right amount of (unique) inversions for a (unique) 2,700 ft. layout; no need to tack on a bunch of barrel rolls at the very end of the ride just because.

Beautiful. That was so beautiful that I might write a poem about it, and I'm not one who writes poems. BOSTONS WRONG

The only ones that come to mind from what I've ridden are the Busch Dive Coasters- but I'd rather let someone else verify that. The transitions on the 2nd-Gen designs seem like might be gradual/drawn out enough to allow for it.

I started to do the hands up thing right around the time I got over the initial fear of roller coasters when I was perhaps 13- not too long after that I began kind of keeping my hands under the lap bar so that it wouldn't slam down further/staple me when the train traverses a valley. Hands up on a ride with OTSRs is sign language for kindly beat me in the face.

Disney has never appealed to me. The first time I went was for the 25 Year Anniversary in 1996 (I was 10 or 11). The lasting memory was that there were only baby rides (and as a 10 or 11 year old, I wasn't exactly a seasoned coaster rider by any means). I think part of the reason it was so unremarkable to me is that Bugs Bunny/WB were what I grew up on, and Disney/Mickey Mouse were not. My first trip to Cedar Point, on the other hand (2001), was memorable despite me having to find out for myself that Millennium Force looked cooler than it rode, and that contrary to every thing I've ever read about Mantis on the internet, it was fun, and it doesn't castrate you.

If I held shares of SEAS, I'd be thrilled with management's visible commitment to cutting costs. Between slowly nudging near minimum wage employees over to part time status (of course, this is mostly to allow said employees some more time to spend with their families- they can even take a trip to Seaworld!) and running out on construction bills (if that does end up being the case), that is an exemplary way to reward shareholders for their loyalty that other corporations should heed.

One of the best times I've ever had at a park was when Great America did Last Blast some time ago. The park was open on the first weekend November and it felt like 11 people (employees included) in the world knew. It was pretty damn cold, there were walk-ons all day, and the season was capped off with a string of laps on Iron Wolf just as some sleet was starting to come down.