dougr

Don't forget the woodie!

Don't some of the suspended shuttle coasters like V2 have maximum height limits so you don't bang your feet on anything?

Alaska Airlines has regular flights from Seattle to Spokane, which is about an hour's drive from Silverwood.

My personal opinion is if you're in the Bay area more than one day, you've got to give SFDK a try. Our original plan was CGA 3 days and SFDK 3 days. With Flight Deck out the first day and the water park closed til May and all of CGA closed midweek, we ended up spending 4 days at SFDK and 2 days at CGA. Medusa! love that.... I just... Invertigo was the highlight of CGA. The first time I HAVEN"T been knocked near unconscious by a boomerang.

I guess I use different standards with stand-ups and B&M inverts. I expected a pounding from Vortex and it was less than I feared. I expected a fast smooth ride from Flight Deck like Silver Bullet or Medusa, instead I got a rough ride like Batman at Magic Mountain. I guess I should have expected that Batman-like ride; plus, we did ride the back row. I would have liked to ride Flight Deck again, but after riding Demon on the way out, we were in no mood to stick around. I did really like Invertigo-it gives me high hopes for Aftershock at Silverwood.

It's pretty easy to get from Knott's to Disneyland, there's public transit and almost every hotel in Anaheim is on an Anaheim Resort Transit route, all of which stop at the DLR main gate. If you don't have a car, it is REALLY HARD to get around the Los Angeles area. Your best bet would be to find a hotel near Magic Mountain with a shuttle. There might be a hotel near USH that has shuttles to USH and MM.

I rode Invertigo on Friday March 21-saw a ride operator with a Jesus name tag as I was getting off the ride. I thought of saying something to him, but Good Friday probably brings back bad memories...

Well, we just came back from about a week in the Bay area, and SFDK definitely wins in my opinion. CGA just seems small and second-tier. Of course, our first visit was on Sunday April 16 after driving about 900 miles since Friday afternoon. The water park doesn't open til Memorial Day weekend and Flight Deck was closed that first day. CGA opened again the next Friday and Flight Deck was running that day. SFDK was open the whole two weeks March 15-30, so we were able to visit during the week. Lines were pretty short, the worst was Kong at one point taking close to an hour. Medusa, except for the front which usually had a three train wait, was pretty much a walk-on the WHOLE TIME we were there . I just love that machine. So fast, so smooth. As for CGA, Invertigo is a pretty fun ride. The Looping Pirate ship is cool, Vortex is fun, and Flight Deck is fun but a little rough. Survivor is fun the first time. Two days and we were done. SFDK didn't bore us in four days. The Tiger shows were cool, the Walrus was fun, V2 is fun, Kong is fun but a bit of a wait, and Hammerhead is fun. Roar is a way better coaster than the slow woodie at CGA, and the raft ride does get you WAY wetter Did I mention MEDUSA?

I think it's that dam music. It makes everyone go a little bananas. I don't know how the ride operators go all day without going insane.

Then why did they remove it??? I think we got some good guesses here. In a large park with many coasters, the downtime/cost equation just didn't make sense. By selling it, Six Flags gets a few million in cash that they can use to "enhance the guest experience". They can fix up the rest of the park or maybe buy some high-capacity ride to fill the space. Silverwood gets a new visually striking headliner ride for like half price-sure it's low capacity, but I'm sure they have an aggressive maintenance plan, plus they are in a building stage and they figure us Northwesterners won't mind some downtime-cause we'll come back!

Once again-large fast expensive coaster in extremely variable weather area. CW doesn't want to wear out their trains or their guests with excessive G-forces. They also don't want patrons to have the X-perience of valleying. So they build it fast with plenty of adjustable brakes. Of course, CW will probably run it on the slow setting, but we should let them do that before we pass judgment, shouldn't we?

Generally the last week of March is spring break. This year Easter is late March, so you got two breaks in one. It's crowded, but the worst crowds I've seen are July-August. If you go in September, the kids tend to go back late August. We went August-September 2006, it was like a switch was flipped. One day monstrous crowds, the next, almost dead. You can still get major heat in September. It was about 95F at USH and over 100F when we went to Magic Mountain. I commented on how hot it was at the motel and somebody mentioned how much hotter it had been in July. (Remember the 2006 California heat wave?)

SFMM has Tatsu and X. Across town, KBF has Xcellerator, Silver Bullet and Ghostrider. Who needs New Jersey?

My fave. It just says it all about this site. I'm still trying to talk my wife into duplicating it with the Fremont, Seattle "Center of the Universe" sign.

It's good to see a little money going into Eisner's Frankenstein baby, the "original" park was such a mismash of areas and themes. Making the entrance reflect Los Angeles circa Walt's glory days is a great. Where is DCA? Right next door to the park Walt built when he couldn't find enough room in Burbank. They're going back to their entertainment roots-Disneyland is about the fantasy, DCA is about how we create it. When Snow White came out in 1937, people thought Walt was nuts for putting out a full length cartoon-the conventional wisdom was that he would lose his shirt-it's good to remind everyone of this with that theater marquee. Good to see a little bit of Roger Rabbit with those trolley cars, Toontown was kind of a first try at this California theming. It would be nice if the Monorail stopped near the Hollywood backlot-nice tie-in between Toontown and Backlot. Areas like Condor flats always seemed to be half done-empty space that had stuff crammed into it. Soarin' was a good choice for the area-kind of an updated theater in the round, but there needed to be more desert/airplane stuff to do in the area-maybe a SLC themed to airplanes-ALA Top Gun except with flying Beavers.

It would be nice if they found some land in California for another IOA.

Excellent. Tear it down!!! No kidding. My nickname for it is a$$buster, The other woodie on the other side of the park is way more fun. When was the last time you were at the park? They retracked the bad section before the turnout last year on Minebuster. Now the ride is really smooth, but boring. Wild Beast however has gone totally to hell in the past two years. Rough as hell, potholes everywhere. We were there August civic holiday weekend in 2007, I've got some pictures of Behemoth's footers on a previous thread. There was a NASTY harmonic bounce/shake near the end.

If you want to fill out your list geographically, here in the Pacific Northwest there's a cool Pinfari mini looper at the Oaks in Portland, Oregon, another Windstorm in Seattle, an ACE classic woodie, a unique Wild Mouse, an Arrow and a Miller kiddie coaster at the PNE in Vancouver, BC, a killer triple looper in Edmonton, AB, and the original corkscrew (originally from KBF) and two excellent woodies at Silverwood in ID. Plus if you're feeling adventurous, there's an Arrow single looper in Calgary, AB and if you time it right during the spring fair or the fall fair, there's another two woodies in Pullayup, WA. Plus there's a couple of mediocre coasters at Enchanted Village in Federal Way, WA.

Excellent. Tear it down!!! No kidding. My nickname for it is a$$buster, The other woodie on the other side of the park is way more fun.

This is a really cool site: http://www.flashearth.com/ It has Google Earth, Windows Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps, Ask, and NASA terra, all in Flash.

Why would any park buy a headache like Flashback when they could get that Pinfari RC48 for less. Or better yet, one of those Pinfari mini-loopers?

It did look pretty sweet in red and white at Expo! http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2462773160064924833ukSmsc

You're completely right. Its very easy to sway speculation to accommodate ones opinion, look at politicians and the media! If they're willing to spend 10 million at MM to update a "non-family thrill" when Shapiro has promised "not many more Goliaths", why wouldn't they keep a coaster like Deja Vu that is relatively cheaper to maintain and doesn't require a 10 million dollar revamp after 6 years of its opening? I can't wait to get on these new trains! Big trains=Big Tunnel as well. Plus if there is any retracking done, it's entirely possible it could cost almost as much as a new ride. What did the Space Mountain rebuild cost?

2006- Tatsu And did Space Mountain reopen in 2006?

Disneyland DCA Knott's Berry Farm Canada's Wonderland PNE