Astat

I'm pretty sure that rumor has been debunked several times in the past. KI is still not getting a dive machine either way, but I'm about 98% certain that the "Busch Gardens dive machine exclusiveness contract" has been proven to be a myth.

As I've said before, Cedar Point's strict rain policy as of late is probably purely a result of the Magnum accident last year. They've been extra cautious (or paranoid, depending on how you look at it) as of late. I never once thought that it would be a permanent thing. It'd be a pretty bad business decision for them to stay that strict forever, as the park is in a location that gets a lot of rain.

Was Head Spin dismantled already? I heard a couple months back that they were doing prep work to take it apart and ship it off somewhere, but I haven't heard anything about it since then.

I'm kinda thinking the non-inverting loop will be similar to the Norwegian Loop element found on Fahrenheit and Speed Monster, except instead of diving into it from the top, you come up from the bottom side.

From my experience (bear in mind this was SOB pre-loop removal), yes they're both pretty boring rides. However, my worst ride on Beast was FAR more brutal than any of my rides on SOB. It was actually the most painful experience I've ever had on a roller coaster. I came off feeling like I'd cracked a bunch of ribs and had my skull dislocated from my spine. However, I also had a very smooth ride on Beast that same day. Needless to say, I'm guessing Beast is a lot more weather-sensitive, presumably due to age. Good Beast ride > any SOB ride > bad Beast ride, IMO. I'd like to get back down to KI sometime soon to see how SOB runs in its current form, then I could formulate a better opinion.

X2/Eejanaika? X was built under Arrow but S&S kept the same design anyway.

^^That first picture finally gave me an idea of the scope of this project (having only been to the park once, I was having a hard time piecing together the overall size from various pictures). This thing is going to be HUGE.

InBev has previously stated that they have no intention of assuming operations of the 2 Busch theme parks. I don't have a direct link, but this is from the RCCGB messageboard:

There have been rumors of Laser being on the chopping block for a number of years now, so I wouldn't really be surprised if it's true. I just hope it finds a nice new home if it's sold.

I think in general, it's pretty shady for a park to be running radio ads that advertise the park as "open" and have a giant "NOW OPEN" logo as the first thing that pops up on their website when they're still in a tentative soft opening-phase.

How are people even getting cameras on Dodonpa? I thought that ride had like, THE most strict loose article policy of pretty much any coaster on the planet, yet I think I see someone a few rows up also holding a camera before the launch in the first video.

As far as the whole question of when track work will begin a couple pages back, as far back as I can recall, Cedar Fair has always waited until footer work was basically completely done before starting vertical construction, so you probably won't be seeing anything of that sort for several months still. Track/supports may start showing up in as soon as a few weeks though, depends on how quickly B&M gets everything fabricated.

Wait...they took an entire ROW out of The Crypt? Wow, way to completely defeat the entire purpose of a giant top spin. Nice going, Cedar Fair!

How big of an area does all the new construction cover? Having only been to this park once, I'm having trouble envisioning how spread out all the work being done is.

There are also a lot more flat rides than coasters in the world.

It's not so much the roughness that makes Mean Streak suck so much, I find it pretty tolerable most of the time (though I have had a couple rides that left me feeling like my skull had seperated from my spine!). It's just slow and forceless, and really damn boring as a result. Just looking at it and the fact that it went 65 MPH when it opened (much less now of course), I think when it was new it was probably a fun ride with some nice laterals, but I wouldn't know.

Well, TG opened in 1990, by the time you rode it in '92 it had already had 2 years to wear itself down. Wood coasters are more sensitive to breaking-in periods when they're new, because the structure breathes/shifts until it settles into a "comfortable" position. Consequently, this is why most wood coasters that start off as good rides but go downhill, go downhill rather quickly. Check out Shivering Timbers or Ghostrider for example, those were world-renowned wood coasters when they opened, and now a lot of people just flat out don't like them. Both are only turning 10 years old this year.

Dinn woodies tearing themselves apart/being maintenance nightmares really isn't surprising. When you look at the list of coasters that came out of the same stable as Mean Streak, it kind of becomes apparent that it's not just an isolated case with this ride - Texas Giant, Hercules, Raging Wolf Bobs, Predator, Psyclone, Georgia Cyclone, etc...As you said, Mean Streak was a direct result of Texas Giant, and Cedar Fair just got screwed by dealing with the same company that built it. Hercules and Mean Streak were almost certainly the reason Cedar Fair had woodie-phobia for about a decade.

In all fairness, Mean Streak does go through periods where it's not THAT rough. I believe the last time I rode it was at the end of the '05 season, and it was relatively smooth (at least for Mean Streak anyway). I kind of think of it like driving over train tracks: Ever notice how sometimes when you go over train tracks without slowing down because you're in a hurry, they actually seem smoother than when you slow down to 15 MPH or whatever you're supposed to? If something's really rough, the slower you go over it, the more opportunity there is to feel every single bump. The trim on the first drop slows Mean Streak down so much that you basically have zero momentum for the rest of the ride, so you just rattle along the entire course. I think it's a great-looking ride with a cool layout, it just really suffers from poor design/construction, as a lot of Dinn woodies do.

The whole "Cedar Fair = everything shuts down in rain" thing really only applies to Cedar Point, at least for most of last season. They became a LOT more cautious in rainy weather after the Magnum accident last year, because rain was said to have been part of the issue in that. Apparently on TPR's Midwest trip, basically ALL of the major rides closed when it rained. In stark contrast, I can clearly remember riding Millennium Force in an outright downpour about 4 years ago. I've never had rain at another Cedar Fair park, so I can't speak for them, but the typical trend at CP up until last year was that most of the major rides would stay open unless there was lightning and/or heavy wind.

Having been to Cedar Point pretty much every year since 1993, I've gotten to see a lot of evolution in the park, and there's a couple things that fall into this category that I can think of: -One of the old buildings from Jungle Larry's Safari was turned into a gift shop, it was called Power Station (Power Tower-themed) for a while after that, now it's themed to Top Thrill Dragster. It's easily noticeable though, it's octagon-shaped and still has the jungle-style roof on top. -The ride was before my time, but one of the stations for the Frontier Lift is still standing, it's a now a bathroom back by Snake River Falls. You can still see the ramps leading up either side of the building, and the openings where the cars came in/out are now shuttered. I think the other station was where the Coasters restaurant is now. -When they converted Berenstein Bear Country into Peanuts Playground, they didn't do a whole lot of retheming. One thing that I always laughed at was that they simply chopped the top themed part off of the Spooky Old Tree (which was essentially a playground slide) and left the rest of it unchanged. This is now gone with the addition of Planet Snoopy though. And of course, most recently, the former White Water Landing station was converted into part of the queue for Maverick...there may be a couple more that I'm forgetting too.

I'm putting my money on it being a spinner, just one that isn't themed to Tony Hawk or Batman like the others are. After all, the article said that it wasn't a Big Spin or a Dark Knight, but it didn't say that it wouldn't be the same type of coaster.

^But on the flip side, since they only seat 4 passengers, they really don't make much sense being anything BUT an upcharge. I've actually never done any of the Challenge Park stuff other than the mini golf courses, I might give this and the go-karts a shot this year...skycoasters still intimidate me though.

I never got Big Dipper or Head Spin at Geauga Lake. I went to the park twice, once was for Physics Day with my junior high school, so I only got like 3 credits that day, and the 2nd time was with my ex girlfriend, who didn't feel like staying for more than a couple hours. I also never got Beaver Land Mine Ride because I never went there with my family, and I'm not a big enough credit whore to ride a kiddie coaster without a kid. I was PLANNING on going to GL with my family in 2008 to pick up my last couple credits...that obviously didn't go according to plan.

It always really bums me out to see a park get rid of so many rides in such a short span, especially 4 flats in a park that's already skimpy on flats to begin with...how many do they even have left now? In the long run though, I guess this kind of thing was really necessary to turn the park around. I just hope they don't let all the space they're opening up go to waste. The mention of putting a Big Spin in makes me cringe actually...not that the park couldn't use a spinner, but they really need some new flats a lot worse.