Astat

An amusement park ride is not going to cause a 16-year old kid to have a heart attack or a stroke (let alone both) unless they have some kind of pre-existing condition. Period. Oh, and the fact that this woman and her family waited over THREE YEARS to take any kind of action whatsoever just screams "Crap, we need some money, who can we sue for it?" The government seriously needs to enact some kind of statute of limitations on how long you can wait to file a lawsuit after something occurs, because this is flat-out laughable.

I honestly wouldn't even hold my breath for the park to re-open at all in '09, IF the deal goes through. There is a *TON* of stuff that needs to be done to this place to make it worth operating, even if a $25 million investment is a steal. I'd hate to see the new owners rush into things without doing all the necessary research to turn HRP into a profitable park...just like the first owners.

So if you were at Cedar Point and a security guard came up to you and said "Dick Kinzel doesn't like your face, you have to leave," you'd have absolutely no problem with it?

Except that the rule IS that parks do have the right to ask you to stop taking pictures and videos on their property. They also reserve the right to ask you to remove any photos and videos, as you are technically taking pictures of their copyrighted material. They also technically reserve the right to kick you out of the park for no reason whatsoever. Does that make it right?

I'm just looking forward to road tripping for the first time ever and seeing a bunch of new parks. My brother and I got Cedar Fair Platinum passes for the '09 season, and neither of us have been to any parks outside of Ohio before.

TTD/KK don't maintain their respective top speeds for much longer (if at all) than Ring Racer will...they accelerate for the length of the launch track and immediately start slowing down once they disengage from the launch dog. They don't have trim brakes before the hill like Ring Racer does, but they're still slowing down as soon as they hit the end of the launch. And contrary to the way TTD was advertised when it was announced, I'm pretty sure those type of Intamin rockets don't actually hit their top speed again on the drop. Personally, I think the forces caused by the rapid deceleration could actually be one of the more fun aspects of the ride.

I thought the whole "I can't believe it's just the launch, one hill, then the brakes!" discussion got old in the winter of 2002-2003 when they were building Top Thrill Dragster? Seriously, this is the third speed record breaker in a row that's been like this, I don't see what's so surprising about it. Also, the amount of trims needed for the hill are going to depend on how fast the coaster hits its top speed. If it's already at top speed halfway down the launch track, it can just coast the rest of the way to the hill and scrub off a bunch of speed that way. Hopefully that's the case and the trims won't be too painful.

"Welcome back Mean Streak riders, how was your ride?" (Typical unenthusiastic response) "...Damn right." Only on closing day.

Have to agree that this park should have been built in the Vegas area. Hard Rock Cafe has a huge market out there with the Hard Rock Hotel and everything. I think a Hard Rock Hotel vacation package that included tickets to an amusement park would do pretty well. I mean, even if Myrtle Beach's entertainment/amusement industry wasn't in such a slump right now, how much sense does a Hard Rock Park really make in that area? It's not like South Carolina is a mecca for rock music fans. Las Vegas works for both reasons: It has the market for this kind of thing, AND the area doesn't really have a major theme park. "If you build it, they will come" is not a legitimate business strategy anymore, not in today's economy. That seems to be what HRP's mindset was, though.

My incredibly accurate tech support-esque diagnosis: TPR was a naughty little forum and got into its Halloween candy a day early, and daddy phpBB wasn't too happy about it.

There are essentially no construction markers anywhere at Cedar Point as of last weekend, other than a couple red and yellow flags off to the side of the Frontier Trail that have been there pretty much all year. It's probably wood for rehabbing one of their existing coasters. If they were building a new one, there would have been a lot more evidence of it by now. The CP blog posted a teaser involving wood near the end of the '05 season as well, and that just turned out to be wood for rehabbing Gemini.

Wild West World was the other. Much smaller park in that case though.

I went to KI in June of '06, and managed to get all the credits in on the first day. Having ridden Firehawk when it was at Geauga Lake however, I know the line for it moves VERY slowly. Adventure Express, Vortex, Racer, Beast, and Flight Deck all had very short lines/walk-ons, and reasonably short waits (~10 minutes) for Fairly Odd Coaster, the Rugrats kiddie suspended, and Son of Beast. I think Backlot Stunt Coaster was about 30 minutes, and Flight of Fear and Invertigo were about 20. Even on a fairly busy day, you should probably be able to get all the credits BUT Diamondback/Firehawk. I'd say ride those first, and the rest should be a pretty quick credit run, unless it's unusually busy that day. As far as Cedar Point goes, I find it easiest to go up the right side of the park early in the day and hit Wicked Twister, Magnum, and Gemini, none of which tend to have waits over 10 minutes. Everybody runs to either Maverick or Dragster at the start of the day, so avoid those early unless you get there right at opening. Also avoid Raptor like the plague early in the day, it has a HUGE line for the first couple hours due to its location, but drops to 10 minutes or less by the end of the day. Throw in a ride on Millennium Force sometime during the day, and those 7 are pretty much all the "good" coasters at the park. I guess you could consider Mantis one too if you REALLY like standups, but it's pretty rough and getting worse. As for non-coasters, Power Tower always has a short line, and Maxair's line usually looks long but empties out quick with its high capacity. I've seen Skyhawk anywhere between a walk-on and 45 minutes. Also, a lot of Ohio schools don't let out until after the first week of June, so weekdays in late May/early June should be far less busy than if you go later in the month.

Wow, I thought this coaster was all but confirmed months ago to be a B&M? Remember all that discussion about the track at the B&M plant and everyone saying, without any kind of doubt, that it was "for the new Dive Machine at Mirabilandia?"

It's the last one still operating in North America. I actually rode it 2 weeks ago, the thing is honestly pretty scary with all the creaks and clunks and other unusual noises it makes, it sounds like it's about to fall apart! Still gives a good ride though. Cedar Point might feel like they have a little extra incentive to keep it now that it's the only one left in the country, I know it was for sale on a website a while back but I think it's no longer listed. I think they might as well remove it considering its ridership and condition, but the problem is that it's in a spot where there isn't a whole lot else they could replace it with.

I was there Sunday too. Got in a couple Raptor rides during ERT before I headed back to Maverick. Waited maybe 20 minutes each for Maverick and Dragster, and about 15 for Millennium Force. Everything else was essentially a walk-on. It was seriously the most empty day I've ever seen at the park, and I've been going there for 15 years. I actually left at like 6 in the evening because I'd literally been on all the big rides already!

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe Steel Hawg was announced as having 3 "inversions" in the press release, which is probably what RCDB is going by. Duane does a good job and all, but there's a couple things on there that are still outdated. RCDB only lists Eejanaika as having 2 inversions, with no mention of the full-full, for example. I'm fairly sure that by RCDB's definitions, the first drop on Steel Hawg normally wouldn't be counted as an inversion. It's 120 degrees, the overbanks on Millennium Force are also 120 degrees, but MF has no inversions.

It probably will be "Prowler," considering that is EXACTLY the same way the name for Maverick was discovered (although that happened a good 8 months or so before it was announced).

New B&M at Mirabilandia in Italy, which has been rumored to be a dive machine for quite a while.

Hmm, this is weird. If the train separated like that picture indicates, that still doesn't explain why the car that broke away completely fell off of the track. It seems like there would have to be multiple failures that occurred at the same time, something had to happen to the wheel assemblies.

There actually could be track/supports in those crates. I know when Maverick's track/supports first arrived on site, they came in those kind of shipping crates, then each piece was pulled out by a crane. The pieces then sat in the field next to Breakers Express until they were hauled to the actual construction site on flatbeds. That field will probably be where you'll see all the pieces sitting pretty soon, as parks generally don't like to have all the parts at the construction site at one time.

I honestly think that Cedar Fair intended on eventually closing the park and distributing its useful rides to other parks in the chain from the day they bought it. The fact that not a single new ride was added outside of the waterpark during Cedar Fair's tenure as owners really makes it seem glaringly obvious. And I believe Villain went for $40,000? I seem to remember that being in one of the post-auction articles.

I think if Mustang's going to be ~200 feet tall, it's probably not going to be the longest B&M, or if it is, not by much. It can only go so far before it runs out of energy. There's a LOT of space cleared out for this thing, and I'm far from an expert when it comes to calculating distances based on pictures, but I think it'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 feet long. Of course, I have no idea if they're done with land clearing yet, so I could be totally wrong.

Son of Beast/Kings Island? Steel Dragon 2000/Nagashima Spa Land? Both of those coasters had some pretty significant and widely-reported accidents, both coasters reopened, and both parks suffered essentially no drops in attendance. Japan is THE most superstitious country in the world when it comes to ride accidents, and if people will still ride Steel Dragon 2000 there, people will still ride this coaster if it reopens.

Yeah, Cedar Point has employee housing both on and off-site, but it's all in very close proximity to the park - you pass by a lot of it on the way up the Causeway. I've heard some stories about their housing not being very pleasant as well, but nothing of this magnitude.