MrSum1_55

If Salt Lake City is isolated, I would go as far to call almost every major city west of the Texas triangle isolated (outside of California). Arizona's only major urban epicenters are Phoenix and Tuscon, which are quite far from each other. ABQ and Santa Fe are near absolutely nothing; same with El Paso. Portland is not too fr from Seattle, but any other major city in any other direction from Portland is at least a day's drive away. Reno is about two hours from Sacramento, with nothing but sagebrush in every other direction. Boise is about five hours from Salt Lake City and six hours from Spokane.

My by far worst ever coaster experience was on a ride I normally like. Having a migraine kick in mid ride will ruin any coaster. I dealt with that while riding Tatsu. One second I was enjoying the ride, but right after exiting the pretzel loop my vision immediately went out of whack. I have ridden Tatsu 30-40 times since it has opened, and I could not even tell whether I was still in the barrel roll or on the the last helix at any point after the migraine kicked in. Once they lowered the seats, I felt like I was about to faint. I could barely walk down the exit stairs without tripping. After sitting in the shade for an hour while slowly drinking water, but this did not help. Eventually, I just decided to head back home, though I find it to be a miracle that I was able to drive safely under the conditions I was in.

After my last several visits, I would give Magic Mountain the award for worst opening procedure. They have very few turnstiles, and they wait until the second of opening to start letting people through. Yet another issue I have had with this park was when I was visiting with a friend from New Jersey who had an SF pass, but we knew that their scanners could not take parks from the opposite coast. We got there a half hour before opening, but it took the person at will call a half hour to figure out what to do with the problem, and then it took us another hvlf hour to enter the park. By contrast, I had this same issue when I visited Great Adventure with my California season pass, but I was still able to get in the park within 10 minutes. Basically, a process that took ten minutes at one SF park took an hour at another.

I actually believe that all Arrows should get the Phantom's Revenge treatment in the same way that many coasters are getting the RMC treatment. Kennywood is ultimate hipster park. They have been modifying old rides into amazing ones since before it was cool.

Between this and Bizarro, SFNE has one of the best if not the best 1-2 punches in this hemisphere. How many other parks have two coasters that have this good of a chance of breaking the top ten? Mirabilandia and Liseberg are the only other two that instantly come to mind for me.

In terms of timing, what I could see them doing is adjusting the lift speed, like they can do with Dragons. Back when it was Dueling Dragons, they could adjust the speed of each lift hill to make sure that the trans synchronized properly. They must be able to do this with TC as well. Perhaps the lift hill could be stopped completely as the blue track finishes, so it can wait for the next train. Still, even if they cannot figure this out or never race them, this will still be by far the best ride in the park.

Wicked Cyclone, because it is not at Magic Mountain

As great as this announcement will probably be, I still do not think it is worth risking pulling an all-nighters for the announcement of an SFMM coaster. If I had done that for the announcement of the last new coaster, I would have been quite pissed.

The only logical way in which so many people could complain about a drop like this would be if Togo somehow came back to life and decided to do a drop like the rumored one like TC. Then I could understand complaining about an unannounced coaster. And I know there is a lot of complaining about complaining on the Carowinds thread. However, that is a bit of a different story, because the complete layout of Fury as already been announced, and rides with some similar features have already been built, so people can more rightfully have an opinion on the layout for the time being. However, you cannot have an opinion on an announcement that does not yet exist. RMC could make this their worst creation by far, and it would still be the best coaster on the west coast. Manta and Gold Striker are probably the best coasters in CA, but both of these pale in compriso to almost any large Intamin, any RMC, or anything from Chance since Phantom's Revenge opened.

I actually thought that Firehawk was perfectly smooth, almost B&M smoothness. I tried it in both the front and the back row, each time on a different train, and never noticed any of the roughness people were talking about. Its neighbor, Flight of Fear, was much more painful for me. The Flying Dutchman at Carowinds, however, is a different story. I thought most of the ride was okay, but the corkscrews made me wish I was on New York, New York. Also, my last visit to Kings Island was three years ago, so maybe Firehawk has gotten much worse since then.

Though I do not think it looks amazing, it does look much better than the original speculated animation created on No Limits. It will be interesting to see how B&M handles sideways airtime. (If you want awesome sideways airtime, experience the first drop of SWSD's Manta in the back row) I do love Carowinds, and I am glad to see the mostly ignored north end of the park getting some serious attention.

I hope that everyone has a freightful night.

I do believe that Rocky Mountain will do great things to this ride. That being said, running one side with a three hour wait on the final day, and giving another day for season pass holders are true disgraces to guests. Factors such as an awful park entrance process and horrible operations demonstrate why I rarely ever return to this park. My last visit, two weeks ago, was plagued with factors as Tatsu running one station with a 45 minute wait, Superman running one side with a full queue, Apoc running one train with a 90 minute wait, consistent stacking on all coasters, and a 90 minute wait to get food at Panda Express. I actually think that it kind of sucks that they probably will be installing a great ride, due to the fact that I would actually have to return to this park to experience it.

Cheetah Hunt. I had heard that Cheetah Hunt was like California Screamin on steroids, but I thought that it failed even to reach that standard. I believe that CS is far more intense with more airtime and better pacing than Cheetah Hunt. Although CH had a better first half, the second half was completely forgettable, and nothing interesting, aside from one floater hill, happened in this stretch.

It has always seemed that BSG was intended to operate at a faster launch speed. Could it be that they would be modifying it to operate at it's intended launch speed? That would seem to make sense, if they are welding track joints to make them tighter and possibly adding a trim brake to the ride. With the Zamperla coaster, I suspect they are going for a version of Pteradon that does not suck.

It seems that few Vekomas are being built now. This is a shame, because they have a history of building bad rides that every park bought like crazy in the 90's, and now they actually make good rides that no park seems to want.

I am fairly certain this will be a B&M. I believe that the binge construction of B&M's is mainly due to the fact that parks in the US are a bit more dominated by large corporations than overseas; although corporations in Europe like Tussauds and Tivoli exist, a few corporations pretty much dominate the theme park market in the US. And, Cedar Fair and Six Flags, the two corporations with the most parks, happen to have a liking of B&M. So, B&M's we have been receiving and more B&M's we shall receive. I also think that a similar thing has happened with GCI. Also, Six Flags has caught on with an RMC buying binge, but that is actually a trend I would love to see Cedar Fair get in to as well.

^^You hit the nail right on the head. Even if this is not the best attraction or the best use of money they have, the optimism for the future should be exciting. It is great to see a new park enter the world of adding major rides, and who knows what they could be building five years from now. This is adding a new park to the league of being able to build big coasters; every time a non-corporate park enters this stage, an angel gets its wings.

Comparing inflation is interesting when looking at how far we have come in terms of engineering vs inflation. I305 and MF costed the same, but 305 was built with a better support structure that reduced costs to being considerable lower after adjusting for inflation ($33 million-25 million) However, the comparisons become even more interesting when looking at old coasters. Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz costed $47,000 to build in 1924. That is $650,000 adjusted for inflation. There are many houses in the bay area today that cost more than that. No wonder there were so many roller coasters built in the 1920's.

Of what I have ridden in the US, I would say Firehawk. It is by far the smoothest large Vekoma coaster I have ever ridden. Second place goes to Everest, and I would give third to Carolina Cobra/Sidewinder (awesome restraints)

There seems to be much criticism of the fact that this is a wing coaster. But, what people must remember is that Holiday World is a small park, and one that should be held to a different standard from larger parks. If a large park like Kings Island or SFGAdv had decided to install this, I may be a bit disappointed. But, we are not talking about these parks. We are talking about a small park that most enthusiasts did not even know existed 20 years ago. The simple fact that this park has progressed to the point of being able to build large and somewhat innovative steel coasters excites me more than the coaster itself.

While I am not the biggest wingrider fan, I do believe this to be a fantastic addition. It is like nothing else in the park, and it is great to see that a small neighborhood park has come such a long way to the point of which they can now build large steel coasters. This seems to be a similar situation with Impulse at Knoebels or Wicked at Lagoon; it will be the first large steel coaster we see from a park that has been mostly limited to traditional-style rides. I think it is awesome that they are reaching out to new horizons

It seems like the worst case scenario now is the addition of more tunnels, which I something I have absolutely no problem with. If this could delay the development of future attractions, then that could be irritating, but I really do not care about the potential for the addition of more tunnels. In fact, I actually like the addition of some of the tunnels and walls, as close objects do seem to enhance the feeling of speed. I do somewhat dislike the first drop tunnel, but that is probably the most important tunnel on the ride. At this point in time, I will not be losing any sleep over new tunnels.

^I completely agree, except for the Cheetah Hunt part. In fact, I would go as far to say that Manta (SWSD)>Verbolten>California Screamin>Cheetah Hunt. However, one element when comparing the two parks is also in operations. I rank the two parks on a fairly equal basis. I prefer the coaster selection at BGT (excluding Cheetah Hunt, as I find Verbolten to be superior in all aspects, like theming, thrill factor, queuing era, etc...). Both parks are very nicely themed as well, but BGW has the strong edge in operations. BGW usually has three train ops without stacking, while at BGT, you can often expect two train ops with some stacking. However, I have found summer days at BGT to be less crowded that BGW, so it really seems to balance out.

My record highest capacity coaster was a B&M junior hyper. I placed two block sections in the middle of the ride, in addition to a long Leviathan style brake run, and a long station that could load one train, unload one, and stack one in the middle. The result was a coaster that could run 6 trains while stacking no more than two, and a capacity of over 7,000 pph. It could dispatch immediately after a train filled up.