SoCalJasonland

I have watched a lot of Youtube videos on Niagra Falls area and while the falls, Maid of the Mist, and other falls/river activities look busy; Marineland, Clifton Hill, the local casinos always appear dead. Does the Niagra area have enough local people to buy passes? Are people from out of the area seeking an amusement park? Would people visiting from larger cities rather have a Six Flags/Cedar Fair pass and visit their local park more often? During the 9 months of the year of colder weather, is is worth the cost to staff and maintain the park when people with money are flying south to Florida for amusements?

This sounds positive but I wonder what they can do to save Castle Park, in Riverside, California? Does Herschend have enough money to fix Palace in enirety or will they sell parks to find changes for the top parks?

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We still have a working drop ride on the Kingda Ka coaster tower, so that may be staying. We could also be waiting on what happens with TTD2 at Cedar Point with Zamperla. Xcelerator at Knott's made it 19 years before a several millon dollar rebuild/replacement of the launch motor and the rest of the launch machinery, and TTD only made it 18 years before they decided not to. I don't know what the fututre holds but it will likely either re-open for one season or sit for one season while they figure it out.

Are they re-opening the really old off premises gift shop or has it been open? I haven't been there since the 70s or 80s. We just go straight to the park. If you are going to drive all the way to the park and not go into it, why not just order something online?

I don't like them as much either but try to buy a real cocktail from at 6 - 10 am on the way to the park plus they are only about $4 each with no tip. So it is either a beer, malt liquor, malt beverage like Mike's, or something actually made with liquor. I tend to go with 8% Mike's harder or the canned cocktails but not great choices either way. I can also buy Beat Boxes but that is just fruit-flavored fortified wine like Mad Dog 20/20 or Boone's Farm in a Tetra Pak. Knott's cocktails are also mostly pre-made and some advertise that they are margaritas made from Beat Boxes. The Monaco white cans actually taste like Monster white cans with the great citrus taste plus Vodka and are usually sold out. Cutwater will rot your gut with citric acid after a couple so I try to stop at one

I think for me that the food can be bad for me but it should taste good. Knott's burger places all serve the same burgers and fries that are on the meal plan but only Grizzly Creek lets you pick and load up on the produce toppings and has jalapenos and peppercini so its a nice touch. The new Casa California is better than the old Victoria Mexican restaurant. The Prop Shop Pizza has cheese and pepper packets sitting out and are only missing an oregeno shaker. Boardwalk BBQ has a whole half chicken or tri tip and three types of BBQ sauces. I have seen a lot of food improvement over the past five years or so. Several boards and Youtube channels cover Disney food but not much mention of Cedar Far, or Knott's in general. Since legacy Cedar Fair positions of CEO, CFO, and COO are running the company now, I hope Six Flags restaurant problems will be slowly fixed. I can barely finish a meal at SFMM but it is not on meal size and solely based on taste/flavor These were my beverage choices for the walk to the park from the liquor store near the Metrolink train station. Mojito in a can!

Rando park - Halloween photos

Visited Knott's on October 9th, Wednesday during the week. No school groups today and the park was fairly dead. The longest waits were Ghostrider or Log Ride at 15 min or front row of Xcelerator at 20 people. A couple of employees confirmed that Mystery Lodge has been gutted and will not return. Ghostrider is jackhammering around the turn from the station to the lift and the midcourse turnaround, so I would not be surprised if the do some retracking on the next closure. The rest of the ride runs pretty well. No additional work on Monte and all track except for one piece of old track is missing. No work on track supports yet. I hope they keep this little loop that you launch through just outside of the station. Rear spike Boardwalk BBQ didn't open until 11:30 am, and I already had a couple of cocktails so I had Panda's orange chicken with noodles. I already ate some chicken and the red stuff is hot sauce. Oh well, I walked it off with 26,745 steps. Prop Shop Piizza is located between the Charles Shultz Theater and bumper cars at the rear of the park. The salads, pizza and pasta are on the meal plan. Here are a couple of the salads and sorry about the condensation. Other options - the side salad is sping mix or caesar with choice of dressing. The Grizzly Creek Lodge in Camp Snoopy lets you pick your burger toppings and all of these items are on the meal plan but not ultra healthy because burger and chicken tenders comes with fries. I would probably skip the fries and bun and turn the burger into a salad from this bar. Chicken tender and caesar salads Pizza Casa California tries to be a Chipotle and is pretty good. Only the Nachos and Carne Asada is not on the meal plan but I get the chicken bowl anyway. Hopefully, these restaurants make it to Six Flags.

It's possible that Ghostrider reopened Thursday, but a weekday 90 min line like this at 11:15 am would be ridiculous. I would use my one Fast Lane and give up. Glad you also got your Xcelerator rides Coasternut. It is great the salads are also on the meal plan Prozach626. I got the half-chicken with mashed potatoes but also had over 24,000 steps with all of the Knott's walking plus to and from the Buena Park Metrolink station, so I needed the excess calories-energy. Many of the restaurants have salads now as options but there are still way too many burgers or chicken tenders with fries as the only side option so I skip all of those places and end up with a Boardwalk BBQ, a chicken burrito bowl, or non-fried chicken from Panda Express. I would guess that other Cedar Fair parks would have added some healthier stuff too, but it depends on if the guests will eat it. I imagine everything in Texas comes with Ranch dressing unless you request otherwise. They also removed all but one small area of Prestige VIP lounge seating for the Boofet so there was no seating available on a slow weekday. I would guess you shouldn't even try for a seat on a weekend. You get none of the empty Boofet but they still had free chips and cookies. This is a before photo of all of the lovely seating that filled the room.

So sad, Ghostrider closed all day Monday but not on the closed list. Boardwalk BBQ still great and here comes my ride SoCal has nice weather for many months I was able to get a first row, middle row and back row before they had an employee assigning people to lines. One of the gifts of Prestige Pass of getting throught the lines early. It looks nice from Sky Cabin Poor old Ghostrider was broken all day I did get BBQ - health fruit and salad options Berry and chicken salads I ended up with a half-chicken with mashed potatoes and boysenberry beer. The food was on the meal plan but not the beer

The problem is that it is seen as low-class and anyone that can afford Knott's, SFMM, Universal or Disney doesn't stop there so it is limited to very broke locals or the one person like me that has several passes because they are addicted to rides. I speak to a lot of passholders at the park since they have the same color wrist band as I do and many have never been to another amusement park and just go to Castle Park a couple of times per month. Some haven't left the inland empire. People buy a $70 annual pass or a $20 to $30 discounted daily ticket and don't spend much in the park. The gift shops and game employees look lonely. Only the refillable drink mug locations, fry shop and Pizza Hut Express appear busy.

I figure I should share some good photos since the heat and fires somehow went away for a little while. So, here we go. This is the park This is the Merlin coaster up for sale in my previous post and the last of the four coasters at the park This was the Dragon spinning coaster This was the Spider rider and the one I am upset the most about because I think it is the last in Cali unless a fair has one. We did get a new picnik area though. The wate flume was fixed and is running 3 logs. One of the better themed carnival water slides with 2 drops. From the observation ride The Sally dark ride Ghost Blasters was either a great FEC dark ride or a decent amusement park dark ride and can be found on Youtube but I don't think there was a TPR video so I didn't link to one. The park employees and guests were told it was closed for an extensive rehab one day and a tarp went up. About two weeks later, a stud wall, drywall , electrical outlets, and paint were installed over the ripped out queue line. I asked about the ride rehab and they said, no we rehabed the arcarde. I think the ride it dead. This was the entrance to the ride and all queue work was torn out. I was told much of the ride was there but no one wanted to spend the money to remove it. They thought about a walk throu haunted house but that idea was also kind of posssibly ditched. This is a small amount of left over paint from the ride entrance to the right side of the candy factory machine with the fake collum. They still have a tilt-o-whirl, scrambler, flying swings, gravitron, kyte flyer, pirate ship, fireball, and a couple of other rides the make it worth a visit and the lines and not long. The golf course would look better with water but I heard that a lot of the couse would need to be demolished to access all of the resturn and drain lines. Plus, all of the concrete pools are approx 40 - 50 years old and would need to be replaced. I guess they could put some lava rocks or something in there so it doesn't look so empty to disguise the bare concrete pools. This was a nice fountain that you walked under. I guess if you don't have paint or wood working money, you don't have money to replace the concrete pools or return lines. Overview Hole 4 looks nicer because they filled the pools with rocks a couple of decades ago. A small amount of Bud's Knott's Berry Farm influence from his Log Ride and Mine Train Attractions.

Honestly, I saw the article, posted it, and I was thinking that SFNO was going to be a small water park and sports fields, so something good for them. But then Prozach pointed out the lack of funding though: "Bayou Phoenix is still lining up the anchor hotels and water park operators which are expected to finance their piece of the project." So, why demo the park if this is just another unfunded project to redo SFNO? You can't see it from a domed stadium, but I don't know if you can see it from the plane to the airport or if they think the news will report on it. I could believe that there is a demolition contractor that could convince city officials that it is a bad look for a city hosting the Superbowl. I am sure us people in So Cal will bus a few homeless and druggies up to San Fran so they don't embarrass Los Angeles during the 2028 Olympics plus put some lipstick on our other pigs. You have to look good, I guess, when you hold an important event. This is speculation, but why demo something when there is nothing but empty space around you where you could develop for cheaper? Per the Vice Abandoned episode, there is no shortage of vacant unused land in the area. I would like something to happen for New Orleans but after 10 - 20 years of hopeful news articles, I need to see some actual action instead of faiiled dreams.

Since New Orleans is going to have all eyes on it, and people flying into the city from all over the country for Superbowl 2025; I wonder if that put any urgency into cleaning up some of the old 2005 hurricane Katrina damage? The movie idea is good but New Orleans really can't afford tax breaks any more than California can at this point, and movie companies hate taxes;-) I thought about it and I would like to see Eli Roth do a low budget Cabin Fever or similar type horror movie of an ex-exployee that wore a evil mardi gras clown suit and wasn't happy about the park closing so he stayed in the park and killed anyone trying to sneak into the park to film it. He would take the dead bodies and build a dark ride with the stuffed corpses as props.