dj snow
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Posts posted by dj snow
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Also, interestingly, your expierence at Lagoon seems to be the polar opposite of the last Lagoon TR that I saw here.
Yes, I certainly didn't think it's a bad park. But at the same time, there are a lot of things that they could do to take the park to the next level. Things like more shade, maybe some more investment in maintenance on certain rides and various park areas, etc.
Their waterpark is also rather small compared to other "free with admission" waterparks, so there's not as much of an "everyone's in the waterpark, so the lines in the dry park are short" effect such as you might find at Dorney, Holiday World, and similar places.
That said, I certainly wouldn't mind owning the place. Salt Lake City is a fast-growing area, and Lagoon has no significant competition. Not a bad position for a park to be in.
OMG I cannot believe the line for Wicked was that big. How long did you wait? I was going to try to do the park in like 3 hours a few weeks ago but decided to skip it, looks like that may have been a dream! Plus, the park looks a lot nicer than I had imagined, almost a half day park!My wait for Wicked began just outside of the (very small-looking) official queue space, so I didn't wait in that long line spilling out into the pathway. Even so, I waited about 40 minutes. Knowing that, I certainly wasn't about to wait in the now much-larger line (and it pretty much stayed that way the whole time I was in the park).
I should point out that I was in the park on July 5, so there was probably something of a holiday/vacation-day effect when I was visiting. I don't know if such long waits are typical for the park.
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Continuing the saga...
Mission accomplished, I made it back to the airport early enough to take an earlier flight home.
So, two parks visited and 1,200 miles traveled in one day. When's the next day trip?
Finally, you're hoisted to the top of that tower. It's 367 feet tall--the world's tallest drop tower. There's a mannequin of Stan Checketts on top that you'll see if you think to look above you instead of down at the ground.
After about ten seconds, you drop, and drop, and drop some more, reaching a claimed 100 MPH top speed.
Once you enter that rusty tube, the floor of the capsule compresses the air inside, which is allowed to escape from holes in the side of the tube. It makes a tremendous sound (hence the hearing protection).
There's no magnetic or mechanical braking system at all--what slows you down safely is the limited rate at which air can escape from from the holes in that tube. Simple, effective and totally unique. Worth the drive.
Looking up from the passenger capsule.
The passenger capsule for Sonic Boom has two seats with simple lapbelts. You get in, buckle up, and put on hearing protection.
Yes, it's rusty. Yes, it looks homemade. Shut up, pay your $10 and ride it.
The star attraction, however, is Sonic Boom.
With the old-style seats!
It also has one of these...
And a Screamin' Swing.
For instance, this Skycoaster.
Upon arrival at Celebration Centre, this is what you see.
The facility features miniature golf, go-karts, arcade, meeting space, and a few other notable things.
Now it was time to hit the road! Destination: Logan.
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A couple weeks ago, I took a day trip up to the Salt Lake City area. The plan involved taking an early flight from Phoenix up to Salt Lake City, renting a car, and driving up to Lagoon to make it in time for opening.
Then, if time allowed, I would make my way up to Logan to pay Celebration Centre a visit. Celebration Centre, if you didn't know, is S&S Worldwide's family entertainment center. Here you can find several of their inventions, including the one-of-a-kind Sonic Boom.
Anyway, after driving back down from Logan, I would take an evening flight from Salt Lake City back home to Phoenix.
I'm happy to report that everything went according to plan. In fact, I was even able to get Southwest to put me on an earlier flight home!
Now on to the pictures.
And inside Pixy Prize, you will find... these. It was at this point that I left the park.
Game Time is where you will find Pixy Prize, of course.
Finally, one quick stop inside Game Time, the park's arcade.
Making my way toward the park exit, I snapped this photo of their wave swinger. Gotta love the mountain backdrop at this park.
Finally, few people realize it, but the pioneers were responsible for Arby's. That's why they have this Arby's Museum in this section of the park.
That's right--phones!! Yay!
Finally, I had to visit the Telephone Museum. Wanna guess what's inside?
And also this creepy doll.
Inside is this detailed model of a circus.
This is the Circus Building. I don't know what this has to do with pioneer times, but we'll just forget about that for now.
Stoves!!
Stove and Hardware Museum! I wonder what's inside.
Oh! Why, it's meat! And also cheese.
Pioneer Village also features a number of displays. For instance, this meat shop. What could be inside?
It's also where you'll find Rattlesnake Rapids. Since it was 103 degrees, the line was approximately five miles in length. I did not ride, but it sure looks nice, right?
Off to visit the Pioneer Village section of the park now. It featured this church, so I took this lovely photo of it.
Samurai, the park's other Mondial ride, appears to be undergoing some major work. I love a good Top Scan, but it was not to be on this day.
The Flying Aces were awesome. Very, very good stuff here. Overlooked but highly recommended.
And these piles of guano!
Such as this custom lamp...
The Bat (junior suspended) is another spot where you can find interesting theming touches.
Jet Star 2 is a nice-looking ride, though again there's no shade over its queue.
Some shade at Lagoon! This nice area is in the heart of the park.
No, I'm not gonna say it.
The wooden coaster at Lagoon is a classic old ride, but it could use some TLC.
The station was nice and open. And I found the operators here to be quite efficient--generally each train was dispatched before the other one had returned, so there was no time wasted sitting on the brakes.
Onward to the wooden roller coaster.
I wanted to ride again, but sadly the length of the queue would not allow.
Speaking of queues, I should note that many of Lagoon's are not shaded. While the park boasts a lot of trees, waiting in line in the sun took its toll. On the day I visited, it was 103 degrees, so more shade would have been much appreciated.
Overall I thought Wicked, especially the first half, was very good. The top hat may be the best one out there--a nice pop and float all the way down. Hope to see more of these.
The restraints were mechanically interesting and worked well.
That's right, Wicked is now open!
This primary-color-barrel theming can mean only one thing!
I really wanted to ride CliffHanger, but sadly never got around to it. It's one of two Mondial rides in this park.
Nevertheless, Spider was an enjoyable ride.
I was disappointed, however, that guests were not allowed to sit on this very inviting fence.
The queue itself had nice touches too, like this castle-like structure and spider-web lamps.
Next, it was time for the Spider, a spinning mouse ride. I was impressed with the details, like this big spitting spider statue, that Lagoon put into its newer rides.
Dramatic queue flyby!
Colossus was a near-duplicate of Dorney Park's Laser. It seemed to run a bit more smoothly and quietly. It also has three trains (but was running one at the time, which was fine).
Once the ropes dropped, the stampede headed to Wicked!
But, ha-ha, it's closed. I moved on.
Once inside the park, it was time to wait at the ropes.
I found the park to remind me somewhat of Worlds of Fun in that there are "islands" of very shady trees.
They were just testing the wooden coaster when I got there.
I made it to Lagoon by 10:15 a.m. With the park opening at 11, my timing was impeccable.
We flew over the Grand Canyon! (That's it down yonder.)
My day began with a 7:05 a.m. departure from Phoenix in the comfort of an exit-row window seat.
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If the trims on EGF are like those on SFNE's Superman, then "turning them off" would involve physically going up to the brakes themselves and either drastically adjusting or completely removing them. In other words, there's a good chance there's no "on/off" switch, or any easy adjustment at all, available.
Perhaps these are different though--I haven't been there.
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This wasn't a Skycoaster, but rather a knockoff.
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For SDC/Celebration City, get the two-park, three-day City Hopper pass. You'll save $5 compared to buying a one-day ticket at each park separately. Even if you don't use the two extra days, you're coming out ahead--and if you can use the extra days, even better!
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You've pretty much got the concept down with that drawing.
Of course there's a lot of other pieces to the puzzle, but your drawing depicts the basics quite well.
Other things to know:
Generally, one or more fans feed what's called a plenum, and each caisson (or chamber as I called them earlier) is attached to the plenum. The plenum is basically a big, strong air duct (usually made of concrete). With this arrangement, all the caissons share the same air supply.
In between each caisson and the plenum is a valve that opens and closes to control the airflow and thus whether water is being blown out of the caisson or is allowed to flow back into it.
A computer is in control of all the valves and can create differently shaped waves depending on the sequence in which the valves are opened and closed. For instance, opening and closing all the valves in sync would produce a straight line wave. Opening and closing them from one side of the wall to the other would produce a diagonal wave. There are plenty of other variations possible.
Hope this helps, let me know if I can clarify further!
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2, how do they work? I can't find any info on the web, is it air/gas powered? or huge pushing metal padals going back and forth?
There are three main types of wave pools: Hydraulic, Mechanical, and Pneumatic.
A hydraulic wave pool accumulates a large volume of water in storage tanks and then releases it all into the pool, creating one large wave at a time. It usually takes a minute or two for a hydraulic wave pool to "reload." Typhoon Lagoon's wave pool has a hydraulic system for its really big waves.
A mechanical wave pool indeed uses large paddles to push the water back and forth. Dorney Park's original wave pool used a mechanical system until a few years ago, when they switched to pneumatic. I'm not aware of anyone still building new mechanical wave pool systems today.
A pneumatic wave pool channels high volumes of forced air into closed chambers (one for each grate you see along the back wall). Valves open to allow the forced air into the top of each chamber, blowing the water out through the grates and into the pool. When the airflow valve closes, the water flows back into the chamber. Most modern wave pools are pneumatic.
3, why is there a rope to stop you going too near the wall? or lifeguards whistling at you, the wavepools ive visited, i saw about 6 holes in the wall with metal bars, what would happen if you got too close? would you get sucked in?I don't think you'd actually get sucked in, but the back-and-forth nature of the waterflow back there would repeatedly slam you into the wall. Being slammed into the wall over and over is not the ideal way to enjoy your time in the wave pool.
Hope this helps!
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You would think it would be pretty simple to design an emergency manual winching system to get the coaster off the lift once it goes past vertical.
Yeah, one would think.
I was once at a (now-defunct) park with a Vekoma SLC during a power outage, and it had a train stalled at the top of the lift hill (a couple cars were starting to go down the drop, so they couldn't use the evacuation trolley).
Somebody walked to the top of the lift and it appeared he manually cranked the lifthill until the train made it over the top and then into the brakes.
Of course, from there they couldn't advance the train any further so they had to use a scissor-lift to remove the riders, but it's certainly much easier to do it there than way up at the top of the lift hill!
I'm surprised they weren't able to do something similar in this case.
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Well, to be fair to the shooter, it is very good chili sauce.
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Actually, Hyland Hills Waterworld is municipally owned. It is part of the Hyland Hills Park and Recreation District. For that reason, local residents get incredibly low-priced admission rates, especially considering the size of that park.
Whether such a park should be part of the public sector is something that's been debated in a lot of areas. Regardless, though, Hyland Hills Waterworld looks like a great park.
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14 And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them.
After reading that, does anyone still think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin?
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From the Best Western Valencia Inn to SFMM's front gate is about a mile. Whether you consider that walkable or not I'll leave to you. Most of the walk is uphill, if that makes a difference.
When are you going to be staying in the Valencia area?
Oh, and I assume you know about Kayak and Sidestep and similar services. I use them all the time. And no, I'm not a paid endorser.
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If you haven't booked already, I recall my rate being $80 to $90 for a room at the Best Western across the highway from SFMM. The room was really big, if a little dimly lit. Ask for an upper floor room and you get lovely vaulted ceilings!
It seemed reasonably clean, too. They have oddball electronic keys and outside corridors, if either of those things makes any difference to you.
Oh, and no continental breakfast as far as I can recall.
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Snow doesn't look all that great, but you're right, at least you get right back to that 80 degree weather!I agree that the snow doesn't look optimal.
It hadn't snowed for a couple weeks, I believe, so the snow was a bit "old." Still mostly packed powder though, so not bad.
The place was 100% open too, with no significant bare spots, so I had no complaints really! I've been on better snow, and I've been on far worse. I'd love to catch the place after a good snow, but I shudder to think of what the drive up would be like.
Anyway, thanks for the comments!
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Last week, I looked at the weather forecast and noted a warming trend coming up. "Heavens," I thought to myself, "I haven't been snowboarding once this season!"
Seeking to remedy the situation, I decided that I would pay Sunrise Park Resort a visit. So this past Sunday, that's just what I did!
And soon enough, I was back in the desert where it was about 80 degrees!
Thanks for reading!
Driving back on some great winding mountain roads.
Time for one more run before I have to hit the road back home.
See? Don't I look satisfied?
Lunch at 11,100 feet.
The Apache Burger: Two cheeseburger patties on Indian fry bread, plus condiments. Only $5.75!
So instead I ate here, at the top of Apache Peak.
All this exercise was getting me hungry. I wanted to eat here, but this lodge seemed to be closed.
Here's one expert trail I did try however. It's called Lupe's Rainbow.
If I had tried to tackle Suicide, perhaps I would have been assisted by these folks!
...and this trail, named Suicide. (I didn't attempt it.)
The Cyclone chair offered some very nice views, such as this panorama...
Yeah, this was a really strange lift. It went up, then it went down, then back up again. And the downhill chairs were way up in the air!
Finally, it was time to experience the wonders of the Cyclone lift. Destination: Cyclone Circle! (Elevation 10,700 feet.)
After a quick ride down, it was time for a slower ride to the top. This lift goes to Apache Peak (elevation 11,100 feet).
Strap in!
Approaching the top of Sunrise Peak (elevation 10,700 feet).
With that task completed, I was on my first lift of the day! (For all you lift geeks, this is their high-speed detachable quad.)
Time to purchase my lift ticket.
That's the Arizona state flag in the middle. (What a beautiful day it was!)
The further I went, the more snow I saw. And what's on the horizon? Sunrise Park!
After a couple hours on the road, what do I see? Yes! Snow!
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From Feb. 23 through 26 this year, Transworld Exhibits hosts the Halloween Costume & Party Show in the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL. People in the party supply and costume business come from all around the world to see what's new.
Also held concurrently is the Haunt & Attractions Show, which is probably of more interest to readers here. It's exactly what you'd expect: everything you need to put together a haunted attraction in one place.
I brought a camera and am pleased to share these photos with you.
After that little exhibit, of course I was feeling a little hungry. And a classic Chicago way to cure that was mere steps away: Superdawg! Mmm. What a way to end the trip! See you next time, Chicago!
...to toe.
You could look at him from head...
Behind the curtain they had an actual human body, cut into cross-sections. Delightful!
Back at the airport on my way home, I found this! Of course I had to accept the invitation.
Finally, here's a tried-and-true old favorite: The exploding toilet!
For instance, this sort of flying dragon thing. It was very impressive!
Also featured was "The Dark Zone." Here, one can find the most elaborate props on display under show lighting.
This seemed to be "Dead Animal Corner." Appetizing!
These guys will happily satisfy your every skeleton need.
Not only did they have the things you'd expect to see (masks, etc.), they also had more basic elements such as show lighting, pneumatic parts, and so on.
Look familiar to anyone?
"So what's your favorite part of the show, sir?"
"Well, to be honest, I'm kind of torn."
For instance, this fellow.
Upstairs is where all the Haunted Attractions stuff was. Corpses as far as the eye can see!
There were lots of "sexy" costumes on display. You know what that means: T&A!!
(I made that rhyme for your enjoyment.)
Most of the space was taken by the Halloween, Costume and Party show exhibitors. For example, this balloon vendor.
Here it is in all its glory: Rosemont's Donald E. Stephens Convention Center!
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Mmm food. I hope you rode the Tornado!
Sadly, I did not ride any rides. I was only there for the food. And I agree: Mmm.
P.S. - Where was the beach?Oh, it's a couple hundred feet down the way. I'm not sure that it qualifies as a beach in the traditional sense of the word, though.
What the crap is Rite?There's no such beverage! Only Diet Rite exists.
dj, do you go to ASU?No, but I don't live too far away from campus. Why--do you go to ASU?
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
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1,500 people would be lost in that park anyway. Nothing to be concerned about no matter how they handle that group.
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This weekend at Tempe Beach Park here in Arizona was "A Taste of Greece." The concept doesn't require too much explanation: Outdoors. Food tents. Vendors. Beer and wine. A band playing. Some rides.
I stopped by for some lunch.
Now with that out of the way, enjoy the pics!
Finally, after my lovely Greek repast, it was time to head back to the US Airways World Headquarters parking garage. Farewell, Greek festival! Maybe I'll stop by again next year!
For dessert I had this tasty treat. Of course I don't have to tell you its name: Galatobouriko!
Just a couple minutes later, I had my delicious gyro! And a Diet Rite, of course, since like Castles 'n Coasters, RC products are served here!
...so I got in line.
I thought a gyro sounded good...
My mission today was to grab lunch and get out! Here we see the seating area, and some of the tents.
Finally, there was a big area of inflatable stuff. This was as close as I got.
And here's the Sizzler, one of the rides on my "Do Not Ride" list.
They also had a Wisdom Tornado! Wow! How often do you see one of THOSE?
They also had some more thrilling rides, such as this Star Trooper. It resembled a high-speed Paratrooper.
They had some kiddie rides set up. US Airways kept a watch on the little ones.
Right across the street is Tempe Beach Park, which is where the festival was held! $2.00 to get in? Highway robbery!
My destination upon arrival in downtown Tempe was US Airways World Headquarters! I parked for free in their garage.
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I'm not diabetic so I don't really have an eye for the particular needs that one might have, but I do have to put in a word for Hersheypark here.
They have one of the largest varieties of food I've seen in a park, so I would imagine you could find something there that suits your needs. Just off the top of my head, I know you can get quiche, smoked brisket, sushi, Chinese, Subway, Nathan's, and Kosher food, as well as all the traditional park fare.
I remember once having a lunch of crab-and-asparagus quiche with kataifi for dessert. And this was from a grab-and-go stand, not a sit-down place!
Anyway, I think one of the consistent points in this thread is that parks with a wider variety of food are more likely to accommodate your needs. I'd put Hersheypark in that category.
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They kept the chassis of the existing trains and made new shells and restraints to fit. The trains are thus unique to that ride.
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Argh! They need to focus on a new ride, not retheming the best section of the park!
Why not do both?
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Phantom's Revenge. It's in a whole different realm compared to the other Morgan rides I've been on. For me it's on the same level as Superman at SFNE.
Photo TR: Lagoon & Celebration Centre (w/ SONIC BOOM)
in Photo Trip Report Archive
Posted
Not sure how much it cost to build; I'd guess a few hundred thousand dollars. And yes, it's an S&S creation--basically a prototype and proof of concept.
Well, Lagoon is a nice enough park but I'm not going to rush back. Salt Lake City is a nice area, though, with plenty to do, so perhaps I'll find myself back sooner than I think. If I make it back to Lagoon, I'll try to make sure it's during a less-busy time of year.
Thanks for the replies folks, glad to know you enjoyed this report!