therick311

Earlier this summer, I spent 3 days at Cedar Point, and I believe the only food I had that was actually in the park was ice cream or froyo. For dinners I had Famous Daves, Bay Harbor, and Fridays. All were decent. We actually ended up having multiple lunches at the Cedar Point owned DQ next to Breakers Express. I think it's the best DQ I have ever been to. It's the standard DQ menu, but the food was actually pretty good. I have been to a few DQs since then, all have reminded me why I don't normally eat there. Also, The Thirsty Pony has pretty good bar food.

That building is what we call the Old Courthouse. It originally served as a state and federal courthouse. It is now actually a part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which includes the Old Courthouse, the park, the Museum of Westward Expansion (under the Arch), and the Gateway Arch. I don't disagree with you on football nationally. I think it helps that football basically has a whole day where there is nothing on but football. However in STL, baseball is king. Opening day is an unofficial holiday here. Many people take the day off work and go downtown for pep rallys and to watch the game at a restaurant or bar and drink. Opening day tickets are hard to come by. Hell, we just named the new bridge they are building over the Mississippi after Stan Musial. But what can I say, we like our pizza flat, and our ravioli fried. We're a little weird.

Really nice photos of downtown STL. As a resident, I do feel the need to make 2 corrections. St. Louis is not the capital of Missouri. That would be Jefferson City. Also, I won't speak for other cities, but in STL, baseball is still our past time.

^ I think that sounds great! Put Topper Track on the whole thing. Then, all they need to do is replace the trains.

I actually think Powder Keg is as good as Outlaw Run.

Song O' the Day: Trapt - Lost Realist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1w1ASlJtWs

Since we are talking about wait times, I'll throw in my experience with Boss when it used to run 3 trains regularly. I remember the first time I rode it during its first season. I waited in a line that went all the way down to the bridge over the train tracks. It was about a 30-45 min wait because of three train ops. The point is, Boss can be a people eater if they run 3 trains and move quickly on the platform.

While this is true, I have never understood why this thing doesn't draw bigger crowds, especially being right near the front of the park. I respect your opinion of the ride, but I think it does fit the park. There is the classic woodie, the large modern woodie, and the twister.

Intamin vertical lift looping coaster. Huh? American Thunder is one of the best rides in the park!

Song O' the Day: Keane - Stop For A Minute

I went to CP in July and rode MF multiple times during the morning, afternoon and night. Every ride I took delivered good airtime on the drop, and all 3 airtime hills. However, after reading this thread, it looks like I may have had the perfect conditions for this coaster. It was hot and humid the entire week we were there, and all of our rides were near the front of the train. That being said, is MF an airtime machine? No. Does it try to throw you clear across the park? No. But the airtime was there. My reaction on the brakes of my first ride was "Millenium Forceless my ass!"

Trip report time! My wife and I headed down to Branson for a Labor Day weekend at Silver Dollar City. We were very excited to finally experience Outlaw Run, as well as our old park favorite Powder Keg! Overall: SDC is a very well rounded park. Between the extreme coasters, family rides, shows, shops, craftsmen, and cave tour, they really do have something for everyone. The park is well shaded, which was nice during the heat of the day, and the staff was very friendly. The park is also quite hilly, so bring your walking shoes. I tend to favor more thrill oriented parks, and for this reason I don’t rate SDC as high as say Cedar Point. However, we did have a wonderfully fun weekend of rides, shopping, and generally just acting like the children that we are. Food: The food at SDC is decent and reasonably priced. By decent, I mean really good compared to normal theme park food, and average compared to most restaurants. The standout meal we had was at Crossroads Pizza. We tried both of the calzones, and while they were pretty greasy, they were also tasty. Of course, no trip to SDC would be complete without cinnamon bread! Also the Outlaw Run flavor ice cream was quite good. Attractions: Grandfather’s Mansion - This is an interesting tilt/fun house walk thru. It is worth a look, however, be careful if you have motion sickness issues. I am normally ok if I stay away from spinning rides. It didn’t make me barf, but the tilted rooms did make me feel dizzy. Marvel Cave - This is what the entire theme park was originally built around. We took the Lantern Light Tour, and it was excellent! The tour lasts 90 minutes and the group navigates the cave entirely by lantern light. You also get to see some areas of the cave you don’t see on the normal tour. I highly recommend this! Rides: Flooded Mine - This is a fun shooting boat ride. Train - This is one of the best train rides around. The conductors are funny, and the show is as well. A great way to break up a day of coasters! Fire in the Hole - You can’t go to SDC and not ride Fire in the Hole. Yes, it’s dated, but it’s so much fun! Plus, it is based on a (mostly) true story. It also takes me back to when I was a little kid and first visited SDC. Thunderation - This is a surprisingly good Arrow mine train. I love the big helix, and if you sit in the back there is even some mild floater air. Wildfire - I really like this ride. It’s a fun B&M looper with decent forces. I also love the trains. Since your feet are off the floor and the OTSRs don’t staple you, the airtime in the last row on the first drop is incredible. While Powder Keg and Outlaw Run have much more airtime overall, this drop is the best individual airtime moment in the park! Powder Keg - This ride is actually tied as my favorite in the park. The launch is great, and there is plenty of airtime to go around. I also like the lap bars better than the ones on Outlaw Run. They didn’t staple me as much as OR, so the airtime was much more floaty. The lift hill does kill the pacing toward the end, but it’s still a great ride! Outlaw Run - This is my other co-favorite ride of the park. This thing is fast, has airtime all around, and is just generally a wild and crazy ride. What I didn’t like was the inversions. The 153 was meh. It wasn’t bad. It just didn’t really do anything for me. The barrel rolls, on the other hand, I didn’t care for. I don’t normally mind hang time, but going through the barrel rolls felt like rolling around in a dryer. I felt my weight slowly shift from the bottom of the seat, to the side of the seat, to the lap bar, to the other side of the seat, back to the bottom of the seat, and then all over again. It just felt awkward. Still, this ride is a crazy good time! Other Branson recommendations: If you are headed to SDC, or just Branson in general, I recommend the following. Deer Run Motel - This is where we stayed this weekend. It is just down the road from SDC. They have a shuttle to and from the park, but we chose to drive so we wouldn’t be locked into the shuttle times. Because this hotel is actually past the park, when driving from downtown Branson, traffic was a breeze. We didn’t have to sit and wait in the normal ridiculous SDC traffic. The motel itself was nice. It was nothing special, but it was clean and comfortable. It is family owned and the staff were extremely nice. Breakfast left a little to be desired, but we didn’t mind since we knew we would be snacking all day at the park. The rates are also very cheap. Uptown Cafe - We decided to go out of the park for dinner on Sunday. We landed at Uptown Cafe. It is a retro diner style restaurant, similar to Steak n Shake. However, Uptown Cafe beats the pants off of Steak n Shake. The food was delicious. I had a bacon cheeseburger, and you could tell the beef was fresh and the thick cut bacon was amazing. My wife finished her chicken sandwich before I finished my burger. This never happens! The only downside is that it is in the middle of the crazy tourist area of branson. It is very near the Titanic museum, and the Ripley’s museum. Billy Gail’s Cafe - This is a little out of the way diner, that is not too far from SDC. The parking is limited, they only take cash, you will likely have to wait 45min-1 hour for a table, and it looks like a old run down hole in the wall. However, it is the best made from scratch breakfast ever!

First off, Silver Dollar City has ALWAYS had a lot of ride ops on their loading docks. Not sure I've ever seen a ride with less than four. I actually doubt their operations had anything to do with the accident. SDC goes above and beyond in a lot of ways, and safety is one of them. They want to be absolutely sure nothing will happen to their guests--and it's not a kneejerk reaction to Texas Giant, either. Really, it goes back to the Fire in the Hole accident in 1980, when a ride operator accidentally switched the train onto a maintenance track and killed a guest. That was really a wakeup call to them, and from then on, they have been super cautious with all of their rides. Despite this insistence on double-checking everything, they still manage to have some of the most consistently fast operations I've seen. I've been going to SDC for about 25 years now, and it's always been like this. I was there the weekend before the NTAG accident, and I was there a couple weeks later. Nothing changed. Oh, and I find Outlaw Run's new restraints actually more comfortable than the original ones. Good move there. We went back to the park on Sunday, and since we talked about it, and I had posted about it on Saturday, we paid extra attention. This is what we saw. There were 4 ops checking lap bars. They were checking them slowly and deliberately. They were being shadowed by what I assume was a manager (person in a SDC polo, not in costume). This person who was not in costume would literally walk behind the ops and watch everything they did. We saw this every time we rode the ride on both Saturday and Sunday. Now, I will say that this past weekend was the only time I have been to the park this year. So, I don't know what the loading process was like at any other time this season. This is simply what I saw this last weekend. It is possible that what I saw was an anomaly. I do agree that SDC does some other safety conscious things on their rides that other parks don't do, and it doesn't normally slow things down. However, things at OR this last weekend were noticeably slow.

I just took my first rides on Outlaw Run today. I have to say I like the last row the best. On another note they had 6 ride ops on the platform checking lap bars, and they were not in any hurry when checking them either. We asked one of the ops if it was because of the NTAG incident, and he confirmed that it was. While I do appreciate their dedication to preventing a similar incident, capacity has taken a serious hit. I think they may be able to crank out trains faster if they added seatbelts.

I went ahead and bought the regular for Saturday and Sunday. I figure 16 rides should be enough, especially since you can only use it on Outlaw Run once per day.