ImmelMatt

What a tragic event. It's always sad when things like this happen, but the reality is that every time we get on a roller coaster, we inherit a certain amount of risk. Same goes for when we get in the car to go to the amusement park, or get on the plane to go to the city with the amusement park, etc. etc. While speculation is completely unproductive, what we know for a fact is that NTAG has run for 2+ years without incident until last night. Thousands upon thousands of people have ridden it without an issue, as is the case for nearly every roller coaster that bears the solemn and unfortunate marking of having someone die on it. Whether this is a ride op error, a restraint malfunction, or a something completely unforeseeable, everyone should remember before calling for weight restrictions or new safety measures that this is thankfully NOT the norm.

A drop tower where the seats tilt 90 degrees, facing you at the ground has been a fever dream of mine since junior high. The fact that one is now going to physically exist astounds me to no end

The list goes on for those I missed, but "Big Bad Wolf" hurts the most, as I wasn't able to get to BGW for the first time in my life until the year right after it closed. On my "if only" list, experiencing that dive towards the river into the 90 degree turn is up there. As for what I have ridden... well, I lived in Gurnee, in the neighborhood right across Grand Ave from the SFGAm main entrance, from 1992 to 1999. Every day I went to school, every time my parents took me somewhere, I would also see the looming and menacing sight of "Shockwave" towering over the parking lot. I would fall asleep on summer nights listening to the rattling of its lift hill taking riders up and the subsequent screams as they turned and dived 170 feet before heading into the first loop. It was the god-awesome first sight I got of the park every time I went, and when I was finally over my fear of roller coasters and tall enough to ride, I was unbelievably stoked. Riding Shockwave to me was a greater achievement than riding Batman in those days. Even though the ride did not live up to my expectations, it was a fixture of my childhood. Essentially, in my eyes, "Shockwave" was SFGAm. I doubt any coaster removal could devastate me like the teardown of "Shockwave" did.

Most Anticipated --- Trance Pacific Rim Elysium Only God Forgives The World's End Thor: The Dark World The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and five independent movies, give or take, that I haven't heard of yet but will be foaming at the mouth over once I have.

Hangtime on a coaster is fine, but I'm not a big fan of Looping Starship-type rides because of how they leave you suspended upside-down for a good while at the top.

So why exactly didn't Disney just go whole-hog and make this a Tron Lightcycle ride? Because that's what this is. Nothing about this ride says "Test Track" once you get on-board the "SimCar".

Iron Wolf back in 1998. It was rough, but was not yet at the nightmare it would be a few years later.

+ DC I need to go west one of these days.

El Toro Nemesis Boulder Dash Ravine Flyer II Phoenix All the woodies at Holiday World Bizarro (SFNE) That severely crazy Togo Ultra Twister with the Dive Loop at Rusutsu Resort in Japan that I must have racked at least 100 views on Youtube watching At least one Intamin Rocket At least one Intamin Mega-Lite And finally, Roller Coaster (formerly Manhattan Express), just for the dubious honor to have survived it.

^ They made it seem like a big deal when "it was just some show and not a new ride".

To be honest, I'm a little sad SFFT released a full layout video. Probably the most exciting part of NTAG's reconstruction was seeing what would be preserved and what would be improved. I remember the first pic of the reprofiled drop and so many people getting excited for it, and then the same when SDC started on Outlaw Run and all the speculation over what the GICT was, and if it was really what it looked like it was. Oh well, awesome roller coaster looks awesome. I'll have to schedule another visit to my friend in Austin in a year or so

^ Replace "hyper" with "giga". Everybody wins.

17/30. I should have known better than to rush through a true/false quiz

(i)Ron Swanson. Hail to the mustache.

The sound of an Arrow chain lift. That is the quintessential coaster sound IMO.

Last night, I dreamed of riding the new Outlaw Run that's coming to SDC, only the barrel rolls were through a log cabin, and then the ride kind of turned into the mine cart levels from Donkey Kong Country.

Six Flags Great America (2 times) Six Flags Fiesta Texas Valleyfair! Nickelodeon Universe To Come --- Six Flags St. Louis (sometime in September)

Spongebob Squarepants Rock Bottom Plunge My first Euro-Fighter... not as great as it looked, but still pretty darn great.

Well, a 7-inversion B&M Wingrider with two keyholes may have been preferred over the 6-inversion one the park is actually getting... ... I'm just going to shut up now.

This is amazing. CP finally gets the mega-looping people eater it's deserved for years, and half the response is complaining about how underwhelmed people are by this. What, pray tell, should they have got? What miraculous feat of coaster engineering would be preferred over a 7-inversion B&M Wingrider with two keyholes? Yes, we all want Mean Streak to come down or get the Iron Horse makeover, but can we be happy CP has finally got something not only worthy of their massive collection, but also something they've needed for a number of years now? I mean, really, did I see someone complain about how B&M needs to "move on" from Wingriders. This is the 5th Wingrider from B&M in the world? Can we give them a little more time before we write them off in comparison to Stand-Ups? And what's with the complaints about them being forceless? Ride them in the back. Especially this one. If it's anything like X-Flight, the G-force on that first drop will flatten you like a pancake in the back. Not every coaster can be the best in the world. This looks like a heck of a lot of fun and will thin out the lines at the current Big 3. Bring it on.

Intimidator 305. Robb said it best: "TWISTY! The ride is TWISTY!"

I'm sure they are pretty much used to Cedar Point one-upping them every 1-2 years after they put in their latest big installment. Shockwave begets Magnum, Batman begets Raptor, Raging Bull begets Millennium Force, V2 begets Wicked Twister, and now X-Flight begets Gatekeeper.

I've rode X-Flight, and this looks absolutely amazing, especially that first drop directly into the immelman. That should be seriously intense.

The video perplexes me. I can't imagine Six Flags making a big to-do about combining the kids' sections, like I'm hoping for, to make room for a bigger expansion in 2014. We may really be getting a Boomerang.

Element wise: The B&M pretzel loop. That thing just pins you down. Full course wise: B:TR and all the clones. From when you hit the bottom of the first drop until you hit the brakes, it never lets up. One of the many reasons that particular model remains one of my favorite coasters of all time