MrSum1_55

^^Maybe it is not out of the question to say that could be a new coaster for Knott's. I would say that because RMC Mean Streak is shaping up to be a real possibility, which has not been announced yet. So, it could be possible that Cedar Fair is not yet done with announcements. Knott's has also not built a large coaster in a while, so could we be looking at an out of the blue announcement for Knott's? Or there could be a coaster going to some random location entirely, like Long Beach or Santa Monica.

I really like this. What seems to be happening is that other companies are seeing Premier's Sky Rocket II concept, and coming up with even better layouts. These types of rides have been perfect for small to mid-size parks, and even one large park (BGW). These types of rides are becoming the Boomerangs of the 21st century, and I am very happy about that. My only question left is, who is the manufacturer of this?

^That might explain the disparity in reviews. Many people who rode near opening described the coaster as amazing, some even saying that it is better than Colossus. But reviews from people who rode afterword have not been so glowing. It is still a great ride, but I never found it to be anywhere near the quality of TC. Those glowing reviews must have come from people who rode with the Polyurethane wheels. I can also confirm that the nylon wheels do cause vibrations, especially in cars 4 and 5. Strangely, the very front and back cars seem to have the least vibrations.

So, it looks like we will get four RMC's, none of them Six Flags. This is awesome, as this means that I might not have to visit a Six Flags park to ride an RMC.

^This is where I think GTA goes wrong. There does seem to be too much correlation between parks who spend on advertising and winning. I understand having weird opinions, as I ranked both Verbolten and Manta (SWSD!) in my top 15. That being said, the list makes still no sense in some ways. The thing that stood out the most to me was Skyrush not even making the top fifty. I know that it is a matter of opinion, but this "opinion" makes little sense in many ways. As always, smooth graceful coasters with floater air beat out many intense, ejector air coasters. It is fine to have a preference, but several coasters with plenty of intensity and ejector air as Phantom's Revenge and some RMC's ranked highly as well. You could say that it was rides discomfort, but I have found Maginum XL and X2 to be worse than Skyrush in terms of discomfort. If you think Skyrush is too intense, then that is fine, BUT I also think this indicates that you should not be on the committee ranking these coasters. It is fine to have a limit on intensity, but if your job is to measure which coasters are objectively better, but some particular coasters are too intense for you, then maybe you should not be one of the people making the list. To me, this is kind of like asking someone who is afraid of heights to make a list of the best roller coasters. You would probably see Thunder Mountain rank above Millennium Force in this case. It is perfectly fine for an individual to have that preferance but that is not the opinion you need in a list that is supposed to be for people who want the "best" roller coasters. This is why I trust Mitch Hawker's poll more, even though there are still a few problems with this poll. I know I am getting a more broad picture of enthusiasts, as opposed to a more homogeneous, narrow-minded view. Edit: I read some more comments, and apparently there was an error in the selection, being that Skyrush, as well as Coaster at playland, were not included in the selection. This is still not right, as it is a massive failure when your list of "best" coasters fails to include two of the most beloved coasters in the world.

^^I have found that to be true of all RMC's: they can be very moody, and they do not run well in the cold. I rode Twisted Colossus once when the temperature was in the 40's, and the Zero-G roll was slow enough so that it actually gave a zero-G feeling. (Instead of being rapidly whipped around as it normally feels). RMC's run best later in the day on a hot day. A cold day in the morning can feel like a completely different coaster. And are they retracking Kong? What sort of "modifications" would they make if they were doing that?

^A lot of people make that mistake. SuperDooperLooper was by 100th, so I planned on making Shockwave at SFoT my 200th. However, I realized after the fact that I messed up, and Judge Roy Scream was actually my 200th. That made me sad, as I wanted to have two Schwarzkopfs as my hundreds. Though some to think of it, I may have been wrong in calculating my 100 as well, meaning Great Bear may have been my 100, and Afterburn may have been my 150. So if this is true, I will try to make Black Mamba at Phantasialand my 250. It was doing TCT a that allowed me to break 100 when I was 14, and break 150 when I was 15. Again, I have learned to plan solo trips after I aged out, so my first international coaster trip is coming next summer.

^I wish Stormrunner would keep its dual station, but also run three trains. That would seem to pick things up quite a bit. However, I would still take Stormrunner's operations over Xcelerator any day. Those combining about how Stormrunner only runs two trains with two stations should wait in Xcelerator's line. Knott's usually only runs one train, so Stormrunner usually has double the capacity of Xcelerator. If you come to California next year, be prepared for a drop in the quality of operations compared to most eastern parks (except SFA).

^^Meriott/Spring Hill Suites are usually the choice of hotels. While these rooms may be expensive, they can comfortably fit three people instead of two. (Each person has their own bed). So total divided cost is probably less than a normal hotel would be. But, how was the group size? In the years I went, I found the ones with the smaller groups sizes to be the most fun. In 2012, we had only eleven kids on tour, and it was awesome. Having a tight-knit group made it so much more fun. But of late, I had heard that enrollment has increased.

Seeing these TCT trip reports brings back memories for me. When I was 14-16, these trips were the best things ever for me. I aged out of it a couple years ago, and I now mostly do solo trips. But even my solo trips I plan more in the style of TCT trips, but I have since gained more of an interest in historical sightseeing in between visitng parks. The trips do flow more smoothly than one might think for a camp of teenagers. The groups are usually kept small, and most of the campers are teens who are really into coasters and do not want to cause any trouble. That being said, there was usually at least one entitled rich kid, but generally the problem kids were the ones who were not that into coasters, and just went because their parents were rich. I might go back as a counselor one day, but only if I end up on the east coast for some other unrelated reason. I live in Nevada now, but if I end up attending graduate school back east I may consider being a councelor.

Has that drop not always been the ejector drop? Or more importantly, is Ghostrider's airtime really that reduced, or have we just changed what our standards of airtime are considering all the new coasters? The most airtime I have experienced on a CCI is Timber Terror, but even this coaster has little to no ejector air by today's standards. I would call it more "strong floater" air. Twenty years ago I probably would have called it an ejector coaster, but Intamin and a company down the road from Silverwood have changed that.

^Yojr heart and your brain would fuse together. I could finally stop making stupid decisions.

WHAT? Cedar Fair came up with an unoriginal name? Let me put on my sarcastic shocked face.

This was actually not too surprising for me, as this has been rumored for several years. But it is a great change nonetheless. I imagine this will be the third best ride in the park. And for a park with only two other coasters worth re-riding, this will actually be a pretty descent boost to the lineup. I have ridden every operating standup in the US except SFOG's, and I would prefer any one of them as a floorless. If a B&M hyper comes next, which is looking more and more possible, then they would have a pretty serious coaster selection.

1. Skyrush 2. Phoenix 3. Texas Giant 4. El Toro 5. Twisted Colossus 6. Maverick 7. I305 8. Phantom's Revenge 9. The Joker (SFDK) 10. Afterburn

This is a tough dilemma. Not only are both of these parks great, but both parks have some cool things nearby, too. If you want to go to a different park, Hershey is not too far from Knoebels, while Busch Gardens is a reasonable distance from Kings Dominion. If you are a history nerd, BGW is close to Colonial Williamsburg, but Hershey is only an hour away from Gettysburg. So, both of these parks are great, and both parks have a lot of other things to do in the area. I would sum it up like this: -Hersheypark has better coasters then BGW. -BGW is a much better themed park than Hersheypark -If you want to hit up two parks, then Hersheypark and Knoebels pack a better one-two punch than BGW and KD in my opinion. So, if you mainly like coasters, choose Hersheypark. If you want more of a well-rounded theme park, choose BGW. If you want to visit two parks, choose Hershey/Knoebels (though that last statement can be up to debate).

So my visit to SFA was my shortest theme park visit ever. I had a train come into DC at around 2:00. After checking into my hotel, I decided to go to SFA. I arrived at around 4:30, and my goal was to get in all the credits and get the hell out of Largo before sundown. I would say, for the small amount of coasters at this park, they have a pretty good mix. Despite most of them being clones, Joker's Jinx, Wild One, and Batwing are really good rides. (Yes, I said Batwing was really good. I do not understand at all the hate for Batwing and Firehawk) I was able to get all the credits in, but I had a really bad experience with my final ride: VR Superman. This was my first time being at the park, so I had never ridden Superman before. Since it was clear that I would only have time for one ride, I chose to ride in the back row. And, I had never ridden a VR coaster before, so I tried that out. So even though the graphics on the VR are hideous, I was initially having fun with it. This was up until the second airtime hill. This hill does get some great airtime, but the problem with the VR was I could not see the seat in front of me. So, then the coaster made the abrupt transition from negative to positave G's, I slammed my head and the headset on the seat in front of me. This caused the calibration of the vision to go crooked, so I removed the headset in the second helix to simply enjoy the rest of the ride. This gave me a nasty headache. Maybe this is why the headsets keep breaking?

^Progress on Grand Texas has been painstakingly slow. No ground has been broken yet, and now their estimated date of completion is 2018. But even that might be optimistic, because it seems like it would take longer than that to build a park. The water park has broken ground, though. But as of the last update, the site for the theme park is still woodland.

Meh, I do not really like this idea. And, I did not care about the Maelstrom conversion, because that ride was nowhere near 'classic' status. However, Tower of Terror was probably one of the best original stories they had come up with in the past twenty years. Even though it was based on a property, Twilight Zone an older property that many of the younger generation is not familiar with. Now, I do believe that this will be better done than that God-awful Test Track conversion. However, the conversion of these two modern classics into something more 'hip.' And I do not like the direction of the company in this sense. I wish Disney would go back to making more original classics instead of feeling like everything has to be based on the newest property. I did not care about Maelstrom, (and who honestly did?) but I have a problem when they feel a need to upgrade some of their newest classics. I think that the newest major non-property based attraction in a US park was Everest in 2006. I will also give Seven Dwarves a pass, because the property itself is classic enough already. But I feel that Test Track and Tower of Terror are two storylines that should remain untouched.

^^Okay, maybe my knowledge of El Toro could be outdated. I know they had no problems checking the seatbelts with the lap bars down, but that was five years ago. I will be headed there in two weeks, so I will know then if loading procedure has changed. It is pretty clear that the seatbelts were deigned to be checked with the lap bars down, but SF could have changed their policy, still. But also, Six Flags does not check restraints in the exact same way Silverwood does. At Six Flags parks, they check the seatbelts first, then lower the lap bar for the same rider immediately after. At Silverwood, they lock the lap bars up, then walk down the entire train checking seatbelts, and after they are down with that, they walk down the entire train again checking lap bars. Six Flags ops walk down the rows once checking two things with each rider at a time. At Silverwood, they walk all the way down the rows and check one thing, then they walk down the rows again and check the next thing. While Silverwood's system is more idiot-proof, Six Flags' system is still much faster.

^Honestly, I find the presence of the metal detectors even more upsetting than the fact that the coaster does not duel. This has been brought up before, but Universal operates on probably the second largest budget of any park chain in the US, and yet almost every other major park chain currently has or used to have some kind of dueling coaster. And yet, they are one of only two parks with metal detectors. The other is Morey's, which has them on their SLC. However, Morey's gets a bit more of a pass in my book, because I am already expecting to get treated like crap when I am in New Jersey. Not in Orlando. Also, the bunny organizing system is awful on Dragons; it is a cramped, crowded space that often has a shortage of bunnies, so you might have to wait in line just to get one. Also, why not redesign the station and have the bunnies there? There should be no excuse for having this bad of a system if you are a park with this big of a budget. And also, there is a park right down the freeway where you can take bags on a compact launched looping coaster. Universal Orlando was my favorite park/resort before they put the metal detectors in. Now I absolutely refuse to rank them highly because of how they see their guests. I literally had to remove a penny from my pocket before getting in line on one of their coasters. Yes, I had to remove an object whose terminal velocity is not even fast enough to injure someone.

Umm, have you ever ridden an RMC conversion? Most of the RMC conversions have been better than the majority of new rides to have come out in the last five years. And if anything, Mean Streak has some of the most potential for a great conversion of any wood coaster. Literally every coaster that I could think would have more potential then Mean Streak would probably be designs that are too classic or already good enough so that they would likely never get a conversion. (As in, The Voyage, Boulder Dash, and especially The Beast). Son of Beast may have actually gotten the RMC treatment, had that technology existed earlier. The problem was that Son of Beast was in such bad shape by the end that it would have costed over $20 million to do the conversion, which is basically the cost of a whole new coaster. With all that in mind, it made sense for Kings Island to start over with a different coaster. But as bad as Mean Streak's layout is, it has no major structural or design issues as far as we know.

That sounds great on paper, but some parks actually use that system, and it is even worse. Silverwood does that. They leave the lap bars up so they can check the seatbelts first, and then after the ops are done checking those, they have to walk down the rows again to check lap bars. Now, Silverwood is a great park, but their loading procedures combined with single train operations make Six Flags look lightning fast. What could work is having a system that allows the restraints to be locked up or down by individual cars or rows. That would require a lot of coordination with the control panel op and the ones checking restraints, though. The best solution for future designs would be to redesign the seatbelts or trains so that they can be checked after the lap bar is lowered. Intamin designs their trains like this. On El Toro, the seatbelt tabs are made to be very long and heavy, so they hand out the side of the train, meaning they can easily be checked by the operator even after the lab bar has been lowered. However, RMC and Premier may have to radically change their designs to allow a system like that to work. And I am pretty sure that this is just a Six Flags thing, not a California thing. Both California Screamin and Viper still operate with the lone OTSR's and no seatbelts.

I rode Joker nine times today, all over the train. This is my third RMC, after Texas Giant and Colossus. A few things I noticed were: -It seems to have a weird rattle that I have never noticed on other RMC's. I only felt it when riding in cars four and five (green train) but it had an intense rattle that felt like I was sitting in a massage chair on ultra super max power. -It does seem to run better later in the day. I know that polyurethane on flat track gives a higher coefficient of friction, so maybe some "warming up" can make a big difference. I also seemed to notice this on Texas Giant as well, but not so much on TC. -It had a 30 minute wait most of today. That was the longest wait in the park by far, as the park was fairly dead. It had the long wait due to being the newest ride, and the single train operations. -Though the ending did look intense, I actually think my favorite part is the stretch between the zero-G stall and the first overbank. I liked best the trick-track airtime hill-wave turn-double down-tilted airtime hill stretch the most. -This one did not seem to be quite as well paced as the other RMC's I have ridden. The overbanks were not quite as well paced as the rest of the ride, and I think I like it better when when RMC sticks to fewer inversions. It was my 216th roller coaster, and I would consider it for my top ten steel. If I wrote a comprehensive list down, I might be able to decide. For now, I will call it a boarderline top ten, at least in my list.

There is some fun to be had if you ride Pointless Express the "right" way. You can arch your back when the back restraint comes up, so during the ride you can maintain a standing arc, if you keep one arm on the handle to keep yourself in position. However, I hope this ride does not go VR. VR could be good fun on the ride itself, but Pony Express does not need a decrease in capacity. It is fairly popular at Knott's, and the wait on the block brake SUCKS if the back restraint compresses too tight. (Which can easily happened due to the angled brakes). Also, the restraint design makes this not the fastest loading ride in general. I would prefer higher capacity over VR.