Ed Farmer

Cast members. There is a difference between teenagers who toil away in the heat at a Six Flags park during the summer for minimum wage and people of all ages who toil away in the heat at a Disney park 12 months out of the year for minimum wage. It warrants that distinction and recognition.

There is a cheap way to do this without breaking the bank. I wonder how many of these new attractions will be an elevated Merry Go Round on a stick like Great Adventure and Fiesta Texas (among others) just got. The way SFGAdv had a season pass only preview for theirs, I get the impression that this would probably be considered a significant addition by those in charge, even though it isn't. The other part of that is relocated rides. This past season or two saw a few of these, and it's cheaper than going to the roller coaster store and picking up shiny (but expensive) new rides. That's the way I interpreted the new attraction at "every Six Flags park every year." So cheap flat rides and relocated coasters (with one or two brand new ones every so often) seem like they would make good on Jim Reid-Anderson's quote. Oh, almost forgot. Freeze at SFOT and SFStl are being marketed as if they're brand new. A new paint job and sound effects on a ride (oh and fire, the most important detail of all) is also marketed like this. That fits the "every park every year" claim as well. So, painting a ride and renaming it is reason enough to trumpet them as brand new.

It probably didn't make Charlie Manuel too happy that it was a close game, gave Washington baserunners, and eventually led to a run. Phillies won, but if they didn't, Charlie might have had more to say. The ultimate pie in the face for Hamels is that Harper stole home to score a run. I would say that's the best payback anyone could ask for, but a few years ago, Paul Konerko got hit in the face by Carl Pavano. The Sox trainer and Ozzie Guillen bolted out of the dugout to tend to him. They wanted to take him out of the game, but after a few moments, Konerko gets up, brushes them off, and jogs to first. In his next at-bat he absolutely crushes the ball into the left field bleachers. There was this: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12136217&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_12136217&v=3 ...and then there was this: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12129001&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_12129001&v=3 I think the only thing that could make that more impressive is if it was in Game 7 of a World Series, and the HR was a walk off.

Did you just order a five dollar shake?

Just because X2 and Apocalypse have/had issues with onboard audio doesn't make it a bad idea-those two rides aren't designed for it. Any number of Disney's and Universal's attractions stand to prove you wrong Perhaps I should have specified- Onboard audio on coasters like X and Bizarro is what I was referencing with my post. Citing Disney and Universal doesn't really prove anything- the whole idea behind those two parks is to provide an immersive, well themed experience. Of course it would work well for them. Six Flags doesn't really do Disney stuff and vice versa. If there was one park I could see this being implemented at, it's IOA. Apart from that, how many 4D and floorless coasters can one ride at Disney and Universal properties?

Turning off the music and extinguishing the fire effects is the textbook definition of addition by subtraction. I'm very glad to hear about this. Onboard audio is as stupid of an idea as anyone could come up with- especially on X. Are there really people who are so bored by a roller coaster with spinning seats that fire and sound effects are needed? ]http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103440/drug-free-treatment

Wake Up- Mad Season- the side project of Layne Staley's (formally the lead singer of Alice in Chains) and Mike McCready's (Pearl Jam's lead guitarist). Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains rank very highly with me, but I would consider this song better than anything either of the bands have to offer. It's the opener on Mad Season's only album Above, and I can honestly say that for the first few months of owning this CD, I never made it past this track. I would listen to it and then start it over after it was done. It's such a damn shame that Layne Staley isn't around anymore.

It's like fighting a grease fire with a Super Soaker. People see a trim brake and a lot of times conclude that they're being shorted. Kind of a what it is, as opposed to what it could have been scenario. Based on the Intamin airtime machines I've been on, I'm not going to worry that these will have a significant impact on the ride. Nothing like the castration which occurs on the camelback hill that turns Raging Bull into Mildly Aggravated Dairy Cow, at least.

Windows Phone does it's damnedest to integrate Bing into everything, so I do. I love WP7, so I'm willing to work with that. It doesn't forbid you from using Google either, so rock.

Maybe having Vanilla Ice perform is a hint that Freeze running backwards will be short lived- like Vanilla Ice's career.

That's my strategy. Hasn't failed me yet. If this sort of thing has been your hobby for a few years, you should be able be able to pick out a few days over the course of an operating season that spare you from purgatory-esque waits. Sometimes you're visiting a park that you normally wouldn't because something has brought you to the area- unless there are extraordinary circumstances, you should be able to rack up most of the park anyway. There aren't too many parks not named Disney that require more than a day anyway. Works out well for me, because I couldn't care less about the glorified FECs with elaborate decorations that Disney parks are. It's pretty impressive that the one person in Ohio still rocking a LeBron James jersey shirt made it into one of these pictures.

Wow, that kind of snuck up on me. Didn't know daily operation was already here. I guess this is the time to go if you want to give the new ride a spin before the eleventy hour waits make their appearance.

I'm not sure a B&M 4D has ever been anything other than speculation stemming from someone daydreaming on a message board. During X-Raptor's construction you would run into posts claiming that it was more or less an experiment for B&M that would end up being modified into a 4D if all went well. How? Syncing the rotation of the seats with the train's location on the course via programming/onboard electronics (something that gets brought up often) seems like it would be incredibly complicated. It's probably possible, but I'd imagine a new train would be required, and an assload of sensors would have to litter the course. I may be wrong, but that doesn't sound like B&M's thing. Free spinning rotation (Zacspin) also seems like it would affect the forces on the train and structure more than you'd probably think. Zacspins don't have the lateral movement that the Wingriders do. 28 - 32 seats being able to do their own thing; some are spinning, the others aren't- and it could be completely different from one train to the next- I was always under the impression that B&M in particular designed their rides with a pretty set range of forces. Doing it mechanically like Arrow and S&S do/did doesn't seem likely either. Not a whole lot has changed mechanically or structurally from Iron Wolf through Leviathan. Why tinker with anything if it isn't broken? Adding the extra rails like X has would be a dramatic change. I'm not much of an engineer, but that's my wild guess as to why the Wingriders were meant to be Wingriders- not 4D.

I was fine with it as Batman: Knight Flight and Dominator while it was in Ohio. I think it's the best sitdown looper B&M has after Kumba (and presumably Dragon Khan, though I haven't ridden). Whatever this mysterious rattle is, it's doing a good job of not being there during my rides. I've seen it mentioned for some of their non-inverting lapbar only hypercoasters. I hope those people live in a bubble.

Yes I really hope it's ready for Winter Coaster Solace and West Coast Bash.

Ice over Fire for me as well.

The way some people exaggerate how rough a coaster is, they would probably be able to make a 747 sound like a hot air balloon. B&M rattle is especially rich. For years I thought that meant what happens if your diet consists of nickels dimes and quarters.

[attachment=0]579532_233263616779224_134105313361722_366571_598749542_n.jpg[/attachment] Yup... Hopefully making the announcement this early into the season means that construction will start soon, and(barring any hiccups) it will be ready early next year.

It's Pavlov's dog, except instead of Pavlov, it's Six Flags and instead of a dog, it's employees who earn minimum wage. Instead of a bell, it's one of the more annoying collections of noise they could find. It would motivate me to give them their neon colored t-shirt back and look for a job just a little bit less demeaning. Maybe dressing up like a slice of pizza and dancing in front of a Little Caesar's.

Is this first drop as steep as some of the other newer B&M 200+ footers? I'm not going to bust out the protractor, but there is a point during the first drop on Diamondback that the track seems to disappear under itself. Definitely adds a sort of punch to the first drop. I came to think of it almost as a sort of consolation prize from B&M for not putting the dip on their hypers after Raging Bull. Just eyeballing the video, it looks like you don't find this on Shambhala. It could just be this particular footage, and I'm not making it out to be a ramp like Goliath or Titan- just curious.

I get the feeling that even with the weekend being exclusive to passholders, it won't feel like it. The buzz surrounding X-Flight is bigger than for any ride at Great America that I can remember apart from perhaps Batman, which I was too young to pay attention to or care about. It's probably safe to assume that it sold a season pass or two. Or hundreds. I wasn't going to go out of my way originally, but I took a gander at the weekend forecast and it looks like perfect avoid the outdoors weather. Could be worth a shot Sunday if people stick to the script and stay at home.

Since this one was announced, that was the one thing I didn't want it to be. The one at the front of the park is more than enough. The positive reviews that are piling up have me hopeful that the only similarities between the two are that they're both steel roller coasters, and they're both painted red.

Awesome. It sucks that they don't make them like that anymore.

It wouldn't be the first time that initial opinions of a ride have been buoyed amidst all the festivity and good feelings of a Media Day. An example of something similar: A few years ago, a friend of mine and I were driving up to Alpine Valley in Wisconsin for an Aerosmith show. We were on I-94 right near the Wisconsin border and driving behind a limo. My buddy remarked that "Wouldn't it be awesome if Steven Tyler was in that limo?" It was just a silly comment brought on by what was a boring, uneventful ride to that point- wasn't meant to be taken seriously. A few minutes later, we passed the limo and sure as the sun, there is Steven Tyler- windows down, smoking a cigar and on the phone. We waved, he waved back- it was one of those stories that no one would ever believe if you told them. Luckily we had a camera and were able to snap a few pics. It was incredible enough that we're driving next to Tyler, but that earlier comment made it surreal. You better believe that was the best damn Aerosmith show either of us had been to, even if the actual performance wasn't exceptional. It's still encouraging that just about every review seems to agree about the helix finale being pretty forceful and the roll being plain fun. Hopefully I'll be able to see for myself before long.

The extent of my death defying experiences on a coaster has been being stuck on the brake run for perhaps 5 minutes. No restraints popping up, e-stops on MCBR, nothing. That said, when I ride an Intamin megacoaster, the Expedition GeForce derailment inevitably appears in my thoughts. Similarly, Intamin rocket coasters- Kingda Ka and Xcelerator creep into my thoughts. Demon's axle failure and stalling at the top of a loop too. I never feel unsafe, but it's hard to entirely avoid thinking about it.