CrazedZooChimp

I think it helps that most of the rides are packed in the front of the park, but the rest of the park is nice and open. It means it's really easy to get away from the cramped areas. Of course, if they put in a new ride to replace to Go-Karts, that corner is sure going to be busy...

Anyone see the passholder newsletter today? Says Wonder Woman is opening May 28 (May 26 for pass holders).

Ok folks, I'm driving down from SF for the weekend, primarily with the goal of eating boysenberry stuff. So, for those of you who've been to the festival (a few times), what should I eat? I figured we'd do the tasting card, but there are so many other things that sound good, I think I'm going to be overwhelmed with choice! Although the real question is how I'm going to ride coasters with bags filled with boysenberry bbq sauce to bring home (are the shops open until closing?)

Thought some of you guys might be interested in this, one of my buddies at Coaster101 has a short review the new edition of the Disneyland Encyclopedia by Chris Strodder, and is giving away a copy (or maybe more than one?). You can enter here: Have any of you read one of the older editions before? I'm curious to check it out. I thought so too. I'd guess is that Hyperspace comes back after Halloween around when the new Star Wars is coming out. Maybe they'll go to a regular "Winter" hyperspace and "summer" classic? I like HSM, but agree it'll be nice to have the classic back.

Back at the Joker media day last year someone from the park implied to me that there was a good chance something would happen in the spot where the Go-Karts are to complete the "Justice Leaguing" of that corner of the park. I think I'd prefer a Justice League dark ride to a new big coaster, though. Well, no, that's not true, I'd love a free spin (or similar), but I think they could really use a dark ride of some kind.

According to Is It Packed, it looks like the 23rd will be less busy than the 22nd, so I would go on the 23rd. In my experience, I have also found Sundays to be less busy than Saturdays and Sunday mornings can be pretty dead. Yeah, that's usually my rule of thumb too. Being the last day of the festival is what worried me. Eh, I have a platinum pass, maybe I'll swing by Sunday morning too on my way back up to NorCal.

I definitely prefer going to parks with friends, but I've gotten more comfortable with stopping at parks on my own, especially for short trips. Like, if I'm passing by one of my home parks I'm OK to stop, or visiting somewhere and have an extra afternoon to myself I'll go to a park. One of my best trips was actually when I was in New Jersey for work on my own and went to Great Adventure after I was done one evening. I rode Nitro, then El Toro four times and called it. Much harder to do that with people. Usually the biggest issue is waiting in line I get bored or lonely much faster, so being at a crowded park alone is less fun, and usually I'll head home early then. I will say that while I've never done it, I think going to a really well themed park by myself would be pretty fun. I'd love to go Disneyland and just stroll around slowly looking at the theming. I guess I've done that with Knott's, it's pretty good that way.

Just made a last-ish minute plan to head down to Knott's the last weekend of the Boysenberry festival! I assume it's going to be super crowded, yeah? Any guesses is Saturday or Sunday is more likely to be busy (22 or 23). I was guessing Sunday just because it's the last day, but...

Hmm, I might need to go back and ride Patriot some more, I wouldn't have put it close to the fun level of Flight Deck. I liked it, but it was very light on the intensity (I went on it the first day though, maybe it's sped up).

I hadn't thought of it this way. Knott's is more nostalgic than pretty much any other regional park, maybe that does mean they'll keep it. The space benefit certainly didn't help CGA keep Tidal Wave/Greased Lightnin' (of course that was pre-Cedar Fair and when the park was stupidly run). You've made me more confident Monte isn't leaving

One of the presentations (the one I wrote about here, same as the fuzzy photo presentation) did mention two potential family coasters, the suspended flying one and a mini wooden coaster. If they actually added both those I could see Woodstock being removed.

Didn't they just have a period where they were running non-VR TNR (classic revolution)? I actually liked the VR when I rode it, but agree they need to do something to fix the ops. Reservations would work, or a VR and non-VR line (maybe load only 4 or 6 VR riders each cycle), or different times of day for it, or like a VR train and a non-VR train, or something like that. I feel like there's gotta be some way to make it work, but I'm not sure I have confidence for Six Flags to figure it out. Still, I've enjoyed the VR rides I've been on, and I don't think it's going away (or if it does, it will be back). I wonder if it would have fewer op issues on something like a dark ride where you didn't have to worry about restraints as much. An Augmented Reality dark ride seems like an obvious thing.

Heh, that's funny, because my first thought about a park from the Golden Era opening now was "yeah, it'd be fine, unless all their rides injured or killed people, then it would go out of business promptly." I do think they could work, especially if small and in certain locations. My local "Golden Era" park is the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and really by far the big draws there are the carousel and the Giant Dipper. A park appropriately themed, probably on a pay-per-ride basis, with one big wooden coaster I think would have no problem doing OK, especially in a location like the boardwalk where there are other attractions around (I'm thinking like if a city redeveloped their beachfront or riverfront it could work).

Not sure anyone saw this, but Knott's (or VRStudios) teased some kind of new VR attraction they're partnering on that is set to open later this year. It sounded to me like it's sort of a laser tag/haunt maze kind of thing. I emailed the Knott's PR folks and they said there should be more details coming out in a few weeks. http://www.coaster101.com/2017/02/01/knotts-vrstudios-project/

They're not really anymore space constrained than CGA is, it's actually a bigger park. They have the animal attractions which take up space, of course, but CGA has the water park. I also think a Free Spin is likely in their future, very possibly in place of the Go Karts (that was even sorted of hinted to me by one of the employees back at Joker media day). And I'd be shocked if Justice League didn't come eventually, even though there isn't an obvious theater near the other DC rides to put it in. Maybe the dolphin discovery pool would be moved? It's sort of by itself now as an animal attraction over there. Are the elephants gone completely now? Perhaps some other animals could be moved over that way? I like the idea of using the space around Tasmanian Devil and Boomerang for something new, they definitely could use a small family coaster (more intense than Cobra, less intense than everything else), especially since the animal attractions really position it as a family friendly park. The other space I always wonder about is the old water ski show amphitheater. Maybe there's enough space there for a Justice League dark ride? Anyone know the footprint those need?

Nice, that's great news (and faster than I would have expected)! Where did you see the info about it passing? I'm having a horrible time trying to navigate the city of Santa Clara website

I would assume there will be multi-day options at reduced per day prices, that probably have to be tied to a multi-day ticket. And I'd bet there's a nice discount for an annual version, and it will probably be included in the higher tier annual passes. My real question is will they finally add Wifi to the park now that they want me to use their app for Fastpasses...

Good point with the live actor (and I assume having enough actors might also make adding a second one tricky). I guess the easy solution for multiple trips without making it too hard on the actor would be if it was like two alternating rides or a sequence (1,2,3,1,2,3) so it was easy to remember to move on to the next one, but a lot more material to memorize. Of course, a nice benefit of screen based attraction, they can always change or add to it without having to rebuild the ride. I wonder if when the new Mass Effect game comes out in a couple months it could be a good reason to update things...

Yeah, I seem to remember last year they were really unclear whether Mass Effect would be opening on opening day, until they said like a week before that it wouldn't be ready. It'd be nice if Patriot was ready then, but until they're more explicit I'm not counting on it (sure looks like its made a lot of progress, though!). Also, completely agree that I'd love for them to add a second Mass Effect to the other side and have it be a different trip. That is the big thing it's missing is the variety of like a Star Tours (although getting different actors at different times of day helps with that).

Absolutely. I would bet more likely Patriot is done first, but I assume Wonder Woman doesn't require too much on-site work so it's not impossible. But they sure don't seem to have done much yet, whereas Patriot is well under way.

Thought you guys might be interested in this in case you hadn't seen it. One of the other writers over at Coaster101 did a break down of how the boom coaster works (based on the patent) including some of the physics and CAD simulations. And he does compare it to the "cantilevered" coaster from like a million years ago www.coaster101.com/2017/01/04/boom-coaster-vs-cantilevered-coaster/

I watched a little bit of the meeting, and dug out the full presentation from the background notes. I wrote about them (and link to the full presentation) over at Coater101, but to me the most exciting things were the specifics of the mini-steel coaster as a suspended one (which I don't think we've heard before), the mention of a kiddie wooden coaster, and the impulse coaster. I also found it really interesting that the slides mentioned both 4D interactive ride and a wooden out-and-back coaster. It doesn't make sense these would refer to Gold Striker and Mass Effect, since the presentation was from September and they both exist, and neither of them quite fit the descriptions. The 4D ride paragraph highlights interactivity, talking about scores and controllers, and mentions possibly being a tracked ride. That made me think maybe something on the other half of the Action Theater, or if you wanted a tracked dark ride, maybe something like the Pictorium (which is still standing, right?). It does talk about an existing theater conversion, so I guess it could be one of the other theaters too, but those seem less likely. The wooden coaster possibility gets its own dedicated slide (the only others to do so are the hyper coaster and the family suspended coaster), and it specifically says "An out-and-back version with a few bells and whistles would be a good addition for the Park.” That definitely isn't Gold Striker, and makes me wonder if the earlier reported proposal for an increase in noise near Grizzly could be a Grizzly replacement or upgrade (is an RMC "bells and whistles"?). Either way, I think it sounds like those two things are certainly on the table for future expansion. Who knows how much of this will happen, but its definitely exciting to see what options CGA/CF are thinking about. It was also nice to hear that the public comments at the meeting were basically all positive for the park expansion.

Anyone going to the park tonight? Figured I'd check out Winterfest before it closes. I wonder how busy it'll be...

I was also there on Sunday, but only in the evening. Joker was running great and didn't have a line that was too bad. Also got a couple rides on Medusa, but Superman broke down while we were in line and didn't seem to come back up. SFDK really can't afford to have two coasters go down. Luckily it was cold and empty enough we were OK with just Joker and Medusa, but it was annoying having V2 down all day. The lights were nice, but a lot of the park is still pretty dark. And sadly the Drench! show didn't seem to have any holiday twist to it, which was a little sad. I also wish there had been a few more fire pits and hot chocolate stands, but the hot chocolate was pretty tasty. I need to get down to Winterfest at CGA to see how their holiday theming matches up.

I forget how good it is when I haven't been to the park in awhile. It really is tempting to say it's my #1 wooden coaster, or at least real close (and pretty high up overall). It's also really nice that it hasn't slowed or roughened as far as I can tell.