azza29

Add Mary Poppins to that mix too - could just do "concert" versions with the better songs and a little plot to help the show move along. I like Aladdin but it has been there for a while, something fresh would be great to see.

This looks like such a great ride! I was riding Green Lantern at Movie World on the weekend (and having a blast!), just reminded me that the El Locos are definitely some of the better "compact" coasters out there, especially when they have the lapbar-only trains. Might have to tack a Vegas side-trip onto my next US vacation just to ride this thing!

Wow. We got a movie in Australia before you guys? Awesome! Saw this one on Friday night and really, really enjoyed it. Fantastic script and casting with some very witty dialogue. Christian Bale is almost unrecognisable and Jennifer Lawrence is at her best as his ditzy wife. Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams do a great job as well. The story is very good, and the ending has a decent twist that isn't too "convenient" as to be unbelievable. Won't be surprised if this one wins some prizes.

Yes, more of a play with songs. I'd even argue that taking half the songs out might actually make it a better show.

The mini tornado is awesome! The park is taking a lot of heat on various social medias for some of the opening day hiccups, but not a lot of complaints that fall outside of the "it's opening week and very busy and lots of people are processing season passes" categories. Will have to wait until the summer ends for a final verdict, but looks like this place will be a success.

I've just been dropping a few gift bags off in each town I visit , not getting enough at the moment to drop more than 1-2 per town each day but this just seems easier than trying to organise anything.

^Hmm... I'm not seeing it on any of those. Must have to win them in the coin spin game.

My first ride on Apollo's Chariot was in the front seat, in the rain. Like a thousand tiny needles, it was!

So this might be a dumb question but how do I decorate a house? I have a task to have 3 types of decorated houses, not sure how this works?

Mariachi band.

I'm going to form a band and book a gig at SeaWorld just so I can cancel in protest.

^^Presents you open in your town randomly drop gift bags, about 10-20% of the time.

^^Corporate Synergy: The Ride!

So far I've found that Flanders, Bart, Homer and Lisa have tasks that reward with gift cards. Visiting friends' towns is definitely the easiest way to earn cards though!

Really enjoying this TR - Mexico looks like so much fun!

Updated! Liking this so far - seems like they keep refining the drop/collect mechanics with each update. I like that there's no 'hunting' for presents since they all seem to appear around the tree. Anyway, there goes my lunch break...

Well I caved and decided to open my gifts. Bravo, Secret Santa! Batman Ice Cubes (awesome), a LEGO Calendar (fantastic), a Shedd Aquarium magnet (another for the collection!) and a THREE-POUND bag of Swedish Fish!!! Seriously that is amazing, when I put that in my "things I like" post I thought maybe someone would send me one of the small packets, but a massive bag - just wow! Thanks so much!!! My goodies. I promise I will try to make the candy last more than a week...

The community is what sets TPR apart from the everything else out there, and this is 100% due to Robb and Elissa's hard work to build it up. Case in point - I mentioned in the ChrisHanKwanSivus thread that I like Swedish fish but can't buy them locally, thinking I *might* get lucky and my secret Santa would put a small packet in my gift.They sent me a 3-pound bag. To Australia! This kind of stuff is why I love TPR!

My USA trip eariler this year was about $9k, of course that includes airfares from Australia!

Well that will teach me for getting my news from Screamscape. I was surprised to find out that it had only opened in 2010, as the ride film looked a lot older. At least with Pirates 4-D, there was the sense that it had been a decent attraction when it opened, and had just become dated over time.

Part Fourteen: Busch Gardens Williamsburg & Kings Dominion So normally each of these parks would deserve their own post, but since I didn't get a huge number of photos of either, please enjoy this special collectors edition mega update! Busch Gardens Williamsburg was one of my most anticipated parks of the trip, and it completely delivered. This place is incredibly beautiful and while it doesn't have a huge number of coasters, every one it has is pretty good, and there is so much to do on top of that! Shows, dining, a food & wine festival, one (long) day was barely enough to get a sample of everything this park has to offer. We started our day with the 'Roller Coaster Insider' tour, which was pretty good - basically a backstage look at most of the park's coasters, as well as plenty of rides. This park has a great selection of shows, Celtic Fyre was really good for a theme park show, with a decent plot and some excellent musical numbers. Pet Shenanigans was a very funny act, kind of like Universal's Animal Actors but using rescued animals rather than film animals. This Is Oktoberfest was good but had too much audience participation for my liking. The food... wow. Seriously you could go to this park and just eat and it'd be worth the trip. We were lucky enough to be comped lunch at the Oktoberfest restaurant, and the plateful of meat was very tasty indeed. We tried a few of the food and wine options too, and they were all pretty good - not sure how it compares to Epcot but I thought the park did a great job! In terms of coasters they are all quite good. Our first ride on Apollo's Chariot was in the rain (and we were in the front row! Ow ow ow...) but once it was dry I managed a few more enjoyable rides. Griffon was my first dive coaster, and although it basically does the same thing twice I still really liked the ride. Alpengeist might not be the most forceful B&M invert however it uses the terrain quite well to make things more exciting. Verbolten was a good dark ride, but for a coaster it just didn't do enough with the launches for me. Loch Ness Monster was the surprise packet of the trip, by this point my expectations for Arrow coasters were low, and I was very wrong on this one. Apart from the interlocking loops being one of the coolest coaster elements of all time, the triple-down helix in the dark was completely unexpected and made for a great finish to the ride. DarKastle was a really good dark ride, especially given the size of the park. I liked it enough to ride again. Europe in the Air was terrible, it's no surprise that ride is now gone. And Escape from Pompeii is a great example of how some decent theming can make an off-the-shelf flume ride awesome! We arrived at 8am for the Roller Coaster Insider tour. The park didn't open until 10, so it was pretty quiet. Just a handful of security guys milling around, and a dozen coaster enthusiasts. Obligatory fountain photo. This park is beautiful! Nobody is here! As I mentioned, I really enjoyed Loch Ness Monster. It quickly became my #1 Arrow. The sexiest piece of coaster track ever. We got to visit the maintenance bay, which was pretty cool. Here is our guide explaining how Arrow went broke and don't make coaster wheels anymore. Or anything, really. Some coaster bits. Here I am grinning like an idiot. You'd think I was holding a gold medal, not a used coaster wheel. This is the maintenance bay track. In the foreground is TPR member homeboy23, who I met on the tour. See you on the Scandi trip, Jeremy! Couple of dorks on the coaster track. Griffon's lift/first drop structure is nothing if not big. Once again we visited the maintenance bay. The underside of a Griffon train! More of Griffon's private areas. Artsy. You know, this would make a decent profile pic. More coaster wheels. We got to watch them move a train from the transfer track onto the regular track. This is about as thrilling as it sounds. The whole front row is empty! What? Inside the control booth! Control panel porn. The trains await their first "regular" riders of the day. We got three rides in our mini-ERT session that morning. I really like the way Alpengeist uses the terrain - it's not something you often see on an invert. Low overheads are the key to profitability. Yes we got to go in here too. An Alpengeist train in the maintenance bay. This was about all we got to see of Alpengeist's backstage areas. Next up was Verbolten. This is what the ride operator sees from the control booth. I thought Verbolten was an OK ride, the dark ride section and drop is quite good, but the rest of it is a little boring. More control booth fun. No, we weren't allowed to touch anything. Cameras everywhere. Special ride op microphone. Verbolten's show building/shed. I've included this photo to prevent the trip report from becoming too exciting. Yeah we went in. Like a pack of rebels. That coaster train looks pretty cool. I really like the wheels on the front and rear cars. No pictures were allowed inside the show building, so here's another of the outside. More people on Verbolten. This coaster is hard to take photos of from inside the park, but the tour guide was great at taking us to plenty of spots to get good pictures. Another warning sign of doom. Obligatory photo of coaster geeks + track + train. The "rickety" bridge effect is fun, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you can just see the track in front of you. A minor niggle for what is actually a pretty good family coaster. The pet show was quite good. At this point I pretty much put my camera in the locker and didn't take any more photos, we literally were just enjoying ourselves too much to go back and get pictures of everything. I can't wait to get back to BGW one day! On to Kings Dominion. Originally what was a driving/rest day became a driving/credit run day since our original plans for KD had been washed out two days earlier. There are a lot of coasters in this park and I wasn't sure we'd manage to fit everything - but thanks to some careful planning, good advice from TPR, and passholder early entry we did not miss out on any credits! We were there on the same day as Coasting For Kids and I talked to a few random people wearing the t-shirts - so hello again if you're reading! Quick take on some of the coasters: - Volcano: awesome Intamin invert, made better by the mountain they've built around it. The start really makes you feel like you're being launched out of a volcano and it gets better from there. - i305: Er. Mah. Gerd. I knew it was going to be good, but the balls-to-the-wall forces totally took me by surprise. I don't know if there's such a thing as a perfect coaster, but this would be it. - Dominator: people were literally fainting in the queue trying to get on this ride. Totally worth it. - Grizzly: better than Grizzly at CGA. Much better. - Hurler: has a queue that takes you on a tour of the track before you get to board. Otherwise meh. - Ricochet: um, it's a wild mouse. - Shockwave: laughably bad. Didn't hurt, was just a mostly terrible coaster. The loop was OK though. - Anaconda: another decent Arrow that's probably underrated. Also it goes underwater! - Avalanche: first bobsled coaster for me. Didn't open until midday and even then there was a long wait. OK but not great. - Backlot Stunt Coaster/Flight of Fear: refer to Kings Island trip report a few pages back. BSC had different effects working to those at KI - Rebel Yell: slowest loading coaster ever. Running one side and with a station wait I think it took 30 minutes. I would have loved to have had more time at this park. Although there are only 3-4 headliner coasters there's definitely enough to fill a day and I certainly felt like we had to leave too early. Overall we had a great time at both BGW and KD, and I honestly reckon Richmond would be a fantastic place to live if you're a coaster enthusiast! If it weren't for the sign, we could be at Kings Island right now. They even had the same dinosaur. More fountains! Dominator! Angles make photos better, I'm told. At this point I'd like to apologise for the hundreds of non-angled photos I've subjected you to thus far, readers. That is an impressive set of coaster track right there. I'm convinced that B&M are obsessed with cobra rolls. Dominator is definitely one of the better B&M floorless coasters out there. I like to think that Kings Dominion put their name on their trash cans so that other theme parks don't steal them. Volcano! This is a great ride, and very different from any other invert I've been on. I'm not sure why people are canoeing at the base of the volcano but there you go. The roll through the middle of the volcano is a fantastic element. We only had time to ride it once, but even so I'm glad we got the chance. Snoopy! Anaconda is another one of those old Arrows that is still pretty good, despite some awkward transitions between elements. The underwater tunnel might be a gimmick, but it's a good one! The star attraction - i305! We were pretty lucky with this one, our visit was only a couple of weeks before the incident that left the ride down all summer. I expected a good ride, I did not expect to be totally blown away! Angled for your pleasure. Also - you can see the airtime on that hill! I love that this ride actually does something after all the camelbacks - the twists and helix make for a great finish to an awesome coaster! Whee! That's all from Kings Dominion. Next up - Great Adventure in two hours!

Great update Robb. Based on the video it looks like there's never been a better time to visit Disney World. I'm planning a trip out that way around this time next year, so this is definitely getting me excited!

Another vote for Riddler's. Impossible to figure out which row you're lining up for in that mosh pit of a queue.

I don't think we'll see a mass removal of the larger Arrows, certainly if a park wants to keep one it'll find a way (custom trains, produce their own parts etc). Some of the are actually pretty good (e.g. Loch Ness Monster, Vortex) so it'd be good to see them stick around a little longer. I can definitely see the loopscrews being gradually removed though; they have aged poorly.

Six Flags America is the worst I've encountered (although the ride ops on Kennywood's Black Widow come in a close second). A station wait for Joker's Jinx turned into half an hour, ditto for Superman. At least their ride ops made up for it by being entertaining, but still a pretty poor effort. In Cedar Point's defense, they did seem to be pretty good at getting the rides up and running again quickly after the rain had passed. But the wind/rain threshold does seem quite low compared to other parks.