The hotel definitely is doing good progress, they are starting to paint the columns red in the back, right portion of the hotel (at the parking lot's point of view). I can't wait to see how it looks when it is finished.
I was at Six Flags Magic Mountain at this time and the radio told us it happened at 4:30, so I was waiting in line for Revolution. I remember when I left the park at 6:00, there was a helicopter flying over the park and two news vans arrived, one Channel 2, the other Channel 7.
Shockwave's new paint is such a big improvement over the old one. I'm sure R.D. is very happy about this.
EDIT: Sorry, for some reason I was thinking of Mindbender when I was posting this.
I doubt Beast can be re-constructed in GCI's strict standards as it would be too expensive for the length of the Beast. Also, I never seen a non-GCI coaster get Millennium Flyer trains, so I wouldn't expect Beast to ever get GCI trains.