AllenA07

LOL! I don't think Mandalay Bay has to worry about the 'competition'!!! Even if there was a competition to be had, both Mandalay Bay and Circus Circus are owned by the same company, MGM.

I somehow don't see this panning out for Circus Circus. As I see it Circus Circus has two very serious problems right now as a hotel. The first being that the attempt to make Vegas a family friendly place back in the 90's has ended and the strip is moving back towards (and has been for 10 years) a place for adults. The second issue is the hotels location. With Stardust and Frontier gone, there is a huge gap between Wynn and Circus Circus. The last time I stepped foot in Circus Circus was when my wife (then girlfriend) and I got an email for a $20 a night room in one of the towers and decided on a "throw stuff in the car" last minute trip. The hotel frankly sucked and I felt a little cheated on my $20. I would be curious to see what the bottom line looks like for Circus Circus and if it is really high enough to justify a project of this size.

We've dropped under $2.90 which is great. Always a bit of a shock though now when I travel out to CA and suddenly I'm paying almost $1 more per gallon.

As I recall if you are fired from the park you're essentally done working there. I believe the official stance was 2 years. That being said I worked at the park 8 years ago so things may have since changed.

I've got a few bottles of water, but in our area other then a tornado risk we don't get much that would really leave us stranded of any extended time. In case there is a Zombie invasion, my wife and I are taking this to perpare. http://www.runforyourlives.com/

I fully agree. I also know however that I'll be back when things start back up. Not so sure that is the case for everybody.

I find myself a whole lot more indifferent this time around. For me at least, this is the 3rd time I've seen the league do this since becoming a fan, and frankly at this point I feel like I care a whole lot less then the previous two times.

I thought that same thing 7 years ago and yet hockey fans came back.

I paid $2.93 in Dallas yesterday.

Yeah it really does have a place holder feel to it.

I think it might have been Vortex at CGA (then PGA). Not sure if it was that or if it was Top Gun.

Did the Marlins win another world series and I miss it? Generally they have their fire sales after championships. Can't wait to see the crowds at some of those weekday games next year, with this lineup they can surly expect to draw nearly 1000 fans to watch at that new ballpark.

My wife and I did our first ever 5k last Saturday and had a blast. We did the 5k foam fest, which was basically a mud run with some foam thrown in for fun. We actually enjoyed it enough that we decided to do a last minute registration and are going to run the Might Mud Dash in Dallas this weekend. These are addicting!

That is great and was one of the things I liked more aboard Carnival. Spending $35 on a bottle of wine that costs me $8 at Costco hurts.

They should be shot but in our society there seems to be no common sense and they let them sue! Remember about 5 years ago the three guys who taunted the tiger in the San Francisco zoo. The tiger was able to leap out of the inclosure because he was pissed and killed one, mauled the other two. The dead kids family and the two that lived sued. The family has settled out of court and the other two are still in litigation. People doing stupid things, allowed to sue and getting a settlement. Our legal system sucks sometimes. That's a very cool case actually. I believe (and it's been a while so I don't know the status of it) that there was a countersuit by the San Francisco zoo for the value of the Tiger that was killed.

The zoo does have the responsibility to keep the guests safe. I'm sure what is going to happen now is that there is going to be a full investigation and a determination will be made as to if the zoo is negligent in anyway. Basically for there to be negligence the mother is going to have to prove five things, 1. that that zoo had a duty of care, 2. that the zoo breached their duty, 3. that the zoo was the factual cause, 4. that the zoo was the proximate cause, and 5. that there were damages. Out of those five elements, you're going to have a very easy time proving 1 and 5, they're basically a given in this case. The question of if the zoo breached their duty is going to be a lot harder. I've read nothing so far that would indicate to be that the zoo did in fact breach their duty. If the fences were shorter then normal, or if the concrete was uneven and that caused the mother to trip and throw her kid over the fence, then you might have a breach. If however, the zoo was doing everything they were supposed to be doing, and all of those things would reasonable keep people safe there isn't going to be a breach of that duty. As far as causation, that is going to be a question that depends on if the duty was breached in the first place, though here if there is a breach of duty, I imagine causation will be easy to prove. I've seen a few stories about this on the news and read what has been online. As of right now I'm just not convinced that the zoo is looking at much liability. Depending on the law in Pennsylvania, it may be possible that the zoo will be found to be a certain percentage at fault. For example, lets say a jury finds that the mother was 98% at fault and the zoo is 2% at fault, and the damages are calculated to be 1,000,000. In that case the mother would recover right around $20,000. Figure the attorney is going to take 35%, that leaves a total recovery of $13,000 for the mother. When you remove the $6,000-$10,000 that it would take me to properly prepare for a trial like this, Mom is not looking at under $5,000. Finally, any attorney willing to take on the amount of work that a case like this is going to have, for a potential $7,000 in profits is crazy. That ends up being a deal where the lawyer ended up working for less then minimum wage. The moral of this long post? I'm not so sure that the mother is going to have any solid ground in which to bring a lawsuit from.

I'm not terribly sure that there is going to be much in the way of a recovery in this case. There, of course, is going to be be at least some look into what could happen. I imagine that there are going to be some questions about how high the fencing was and whether or not the net in question was in place to catch a falling person. The issue is going to turn on whether or not the park should have seen an injury like this being foreseeable, which I'm not sure from the facts that they were. With, what seems to be, such massive negligence on the part of the mother I think any type of recovery could be very limited. Considering that generally payment in these types of cases is going to be contingent, you need to be very careful about the cases you take.

I wouldn't be so sure that Mom won't be charged in this case. I would advise her at this point to "lawyer up" in case eventual child endangerment charges come her way. Such a sad story, it was an accident that could have been avoided.

See, and it's interesting you say that, because a storm destroyed the old Santa Monica Pier in 1983 which later resurrected into the pier that you had all your memories on. Everything is cyclical. The piers will be back. The rides will be back. And new memories will be made. I had no idea that it had been destroyed. I learn something new every day!

I had to run sound at the park for key club day one year. Ranks as one of the worst days I had during my year working there!

I feel bad for the people in the area that lost these parks. I was thinking about the situation and thought about what would happen if a huge storm hit LA and destroyed the Santa Monica pier and all the rides in Pacific Park. I'll be quick to admit that the Santa Monica West Coaster is very possibly the most boring (and over priced) coaster I've ever been on. I've seen monorails with more thrills. However I remember riding it when I was a kid when we would go to the beach out there. When I was living in the dorms my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I used to take the bus down to the Pier all the time and spend the day there. It is where we did the majority of our dating. Needless to say the Santa Monica pier holds a lot of great memories for me and is a place that I consider special. The coaster sucks, but if it were destroyed I would be upset about it. Not because the world has lost a great ride, but because the park held special memories for me. Sure they can rebuild it, and I would hope they do, but still it would never be the same as before. Santa Monica is one of those places where I hope for continuity over the years (despite knowing changes will be made). Looking over at the rides lost in New Jersey, I feel bad for the people who held those boardwalks and piers in the same place I hold the Santa Monica Pier. I'm sure there were a lot of people who just watched a lot of memories, happy times, and special places, wash out into the Atlantic. I bet a lot of those people would tell you the rides sucked, but it didn't really matter because it was never about the rides being good. It was about the place, and the memories associated with those rides. Hopefully they do rebuild and a new generation of people can make their own happy memories there.

They'll bring in Michael Bay to direct it. In reality I think Peter Jackson would do some great work for the series.

I was over in that area about 6 weeks ago and didn't see anything that remotely looked like construction going on.

This thread made me curious so I busted out two of my binders (1 hockey and 1 baseball) and flipped through a couple pages. Sure enough I've got a handful of gems in there. Among my baseball cards I found rookie cards for Griffey Jr, Bond, Clemens, Mcgwire, and a few Pedro Martinez cards. Somewhere (I believe in another binder) I know I have a Ripkin rookie card sitting around. Over on the hockey side of things I found a few gems (granted I went looking for these specific cards) including a Selanne and Lindros rookie card. The Lindros card is actually from his minor league days, I can't help but think injuries drove the value down. Finally I found my two Mario Lemieux rookie cards. One of them I purchased for $10 bucks back in the mid 90's and is in mint condition. The other one I found in a random box of cards (the card shop I used to go to sold boxes of 1000 cards for $25 bucks, generally you got 995 cards of third line role players, but every now and then something awesome would find it's way in there. Most of the rookie cards I listed for both baseball and hockey came from those box sets.) that I had purchased.

As as kid/teenager I collected cards. I've got around 1000 football cards, and 200 NASCAR cards. Those were always the secondary collections however. I've got approximately 12,000 Baseball cards, and another 10,000 or so hockey cards. Admittedly they are now sitting in a closet gaining value and dust.