ABW

Hey, Flight Deck, and Gold Striker will be open. What more could you want? I'll be there. It'll be interesting to see how the crowds turn out to be.

^Ah, yes. After all these years I still neglect to expunge "for all intensive purpose" to "for all intents and purposes" in my proofreading. Thank you I know it's a very controversial statement I made in that post, but I'd rather not elaborate and turn this thread into an argument on merely whether it is changing the stigma, and if so, how. That's something for more another conversation. Although we may disagree, I still enjoyed and agreed with the points made in your original post. Notwithstanding, I definitely agree that you can can be against the stigmatization as well as NAMI.

^Yeah, sorry man. I didn't get offended, but just found it rather wry. Important distinction, but it's not a problem regardless. I just wish this whole controversy with respect to the Haunt attractions were less polarizing. In my opinion, this execution of power coming from advocates that has resulted in dampening these Halloween events has simply worsened the stigma that they are so desperately trying to mitigate. It's just an unfortunate situation. I side with the parks in this instance for all intents and purposes and for anyone curious, but again, this whole situation is painful to watch personally. --ABW, Hey I may be stupid, but not that stupid.

Disregard this

Does it feel like it ends faster than Goliath? I don't know if it ends faster then Goliath as I haven't been on that. But I know The Joker can sometimes feel like it won't even make it up onto the break run. I guess when the track is "cold" and the train is only like half full. I think it's been getting more consistent in speed as the season has gone on. Meanwhile when its like 4 pm on a 85+ degree day and the train is near full. God the thing haul's butt trough the entire course. during those times it feels like it's less then even 50 seconds from the first drop. It seemed to be running more slowly again when I went on Saturday. I would hope and expect things to improve with time. Goliath is certainly more consistent.

The purple train is now running with people. Proof

I will also be visiting on a Monday and Tuesday in early August. I understand based on past answers that it will be crowded. Could somebody outline what the true low capacity attractions are, so I know to head to them first? I am completely clueless as to how this park functions, and further, what a good "plan of attack" would be, so if you have tips that work for you, I'd love to hear them. My apologies if this has already been answered. Thank you in advance.

Just to clarify to the more anti-speculative folks: I'm not trying to stir unreasonable speculation, my post was merely based on an observation. I know it wasn't implied, but let me be clear that I think a re-theme or repaint would be far off and, frankly, isn't going to happen soon.

Random thought: If there's Superman, Penguin, and The Joker all in the same area as V2, shouldn't we expect a retheme of V2 soon? Seriously, doesn't that outlier of theme seem a bit odd?

It's running one train as of now. EDIT: Oh man, that one train operation was easily worth the wait. The Joker is running faster than ever and is clearly starting to break in. Have a great time, anyone who goes!

I called the park and Joker is still inoperable according to a gentlemen on the phone who contacted maintenance directly (thank you) and said it was "inoperable." I wouldn't keep my hopes up for this weekend at all.

It would appear that AAA is having an event on this Friday, the 6th (AAA Member Exclusive Night.) Does anyone suspect that to worsen the likelihood of the park being close to empty as it often seems to be on weekdays? Thanks a bunch.

I'll be going on Friday as well. Anybody who is interested in going as well is free to PM me to meet up.

^That's true. I overestimated the need for a Flash Pass in that prior post, but there are times when it can get really crowded to a point where I would choose it.

^Vertical Velocity wasn't operating due to routine maintenance yesterday and almost certainly won't be when you go on Friday either. Hammerhead should also still be down due to maintenance. Also, Boomerang wasn't going as of last visit. It was running on the 13th of this month but suddenly closed within one week later. I would not expect it to be operating, though. As for crowds, Friday - Sunday tends to be the more busy portion of the week, with Saturday being the most crowded, but I haven't been on a Friday in a while so I would just say expect crowds, but not for it to be too crowded beyond belief. Of course, getting to the park early and, should you prefer, The Flash Pass can help the situation. I hope this helps a little.

Well, after a nearly-four year hiatus, I have decided to return to roller coaster enthusiasm. I was indeed the enthusiast who has been mentioned in previous posts. I took my first trip to SFDK last week and again today for the first time in nearly five years and was very impressed. Superman definitely impressed me and the other coasters I went on, Medusa, Kong, and Boomerang all seem to running at their respective bests. The Joker's construction is progressing just as well as has been reported, and the workers braved the rainy weather today in order to continue construction. I found Dare Devil to be fun as well, so I'm glad the put it in. I also noticed that one of Medusa's trains has just finished refurbishment and looks excellent. Oh, and here's who I met today: Fred, owner of RMC.

If you were to say that in the 1990's back when the park was being mis-managed, then I'd certainly agree with you on that. However, it's not the 1990's, and management has progressed a lot since the Eisner era of Disneyland. I'm not quite sure what you mean by neglected, because of all the theme parks I've been to (which isn't quite a ton yet, but I've still been to some parks like Busch that are of high quality), Disneyland is by far the least neglected looking as far as upkeep and ride updates go. We also must remember how landlocked DL is compared to parks like WDW that basically have unlimited space. We should also take a look at how much management cares about fixing DCA with better theming that makes sense, a new land, and a new E-Ticket. Let's also not forget how an "E-Ticket" compares to a "big attraction" at any other reigonal theme park. With Disneyland, the location needs to make sense, the theming must be extensive, and the capacity needs to be up to Disney standards. It would also probably have to be underground if it was in Disney, due to the lack of room above ground, so that certainly puts a bit of a limitation on what they can do. Look at Splash Mountain, it costed $75 Million to build in 1989. Any other theme park could just invest the $20 Million and maybe add a little theming here and there and be done with it.

Let's not get in to this conversation about Disneyland "needing" a new ride the same year that Cars Land is opening. Investing in one more E-Ticket isn't going to do much for the crowds when it all comes down to it. It also doesn't really make sense for this to be a topic of conversation for Disneyland, because there's so many things to do already, and so many high capacity attractions already, that they don't need one so soon. Plus, look at the amount of money Disney Parks just spent on DCA to make all those improvments, about $1 Billion. So let's not get in to this.

^Even still, it's not official yet. As a friend of mine was pointing out, The L.A. Times isn't a completely reliable news source for coaster news. They made claims last year making it sound like a coaster was coming in 2012, but that clearly didn't happen. Having access to a press release that a company WANTED to be posted everywhere put up a few hours before it was suppose to doesn't mean that the L.A. Times has insider, Amusment Industry information for everything. We'll have to wait and see. I'm still glad to see this happening, however.

^ Answer:

That wasn't an old and cliche coaster enthusiast "joke" or anything (notice the quotation marks). JUST KIDDING! It was! BTW, NEWSFLASH XYZ: Dick Kinzel no longer runs Cedar Fair! These jokes are no longer valid! Stop beating the dead horse already! Calm DOWN people! The park isn't opening tomorrow! As someone already said, the've got more than three months! Three whole months, give them some time before you jump to conclusion that they're just going to keep the the trains exactly like how they are now. Just wait a little bit! And, $50 says some enthusiast will freak out if they see another photo like this in a week and it hasn't changed!

So it's false advertising? That was funny. Agreed

^Something's telling me that's NOT what she meant...

I was looking through an article regarding the investor call that Cedar Fair had recently and was pleased to find that they have created new ads for Cedar Point: So what do you guys think? Personally, I think these look WAY better than the old ads did and these ones have more of an emotion to it. I'm really confident about the direction the company is currently headed in. EDIT: Here's a link to the article where this photo came from. You can also see a couple more of the ads on this website as well. http://newsplusnotes.blogspot.com/2012/01/cedar-fair-is-looking-fun-forward.html

I believe it's called an "Arrow"; Arrow transition to be exact.