mightypotato

2010 was a great year for me. A lot of theme parks, coasters and driving. Oh god, the driving. Anyways, my favourite moment of the year would have been in July/August sometime at Canada's Wonderland. The forecast was calling for a chance of rain later in the day, but a friend and I were undeterred and made our way to the park. For the first part of the day, the weather was gorgeous. After lunch, we decided to get another lap or two on Behemoth. As we're making our way up the lift, it starts to lightly rain. We laugh saying how we're gonna get mildly wet. As we go over the second hill towards the hammerhead, the skies opened up and it started to pour. We finished the ride in a torrential downpour, laughing the whole way. Then, just to make matters worse, the train ended up stacked on the brake run for a while, further drenching us. When we finally made our way back to the station, the entire train of completely soaked people burst into laughter and applause. That was definitely the highlight of the year for me.

I see him as more of a Jamie Farr from Cannonball Run. But to each his own...

The perpetual rebuild of the Toronto Maple Leafs continues its arduous march today as the Leafs deal Francois Beauchemin back to Anaheim for Joffrey Lupul, Jake Gardiner and a conditional draft pick (4th/6th round). All I want is to watch playoff hockey again. All I ask is an 8th seed. Is that really so much to ask Brian Burke/Ron Wilson? *sobs quietly in a corner*

Agreed. The vertical loop on the Vekoma flyers is one of my all time favourite elements. I'd love to see how B&M's effort fares.

That's Starcraft. It's a commonly known fact that 65% of China's economy is based on WoW gold sellers.

LaRonde might be bad for most coasters, but at least they haul butt on their best coaster Goliath by keeping the line moving. It was that way on my last visit, I'd hate to hear that they fail on that coaster now. The operations on Goliath are still top notch. They still keep the line moving well and dispatch trains quite fast. Now, for the rest of the rides? Well...the less said, the better.

This is the....wackiest trip report I've ever seen! I'll be here all week! Try the veal and tip your waitress!

My rankings, sparse though they may be... The Voyage - Holiday World Ravine Flyer II - Waldameer Silver Comet - Martin's Fantasy Is. The Legend - Holiday World Raven - Holiday World The Beast - Kings Island Comet - Waldameer Blue Streak - Cedar Point Jack Rabbit - Seabreeze Racer - Kings Island Predator - Darien Lake Ghoster Coaster - Canada's Wonderland Le Monstre - La Ronde M.Can.Mine Buster - Canada's Wonderland Wilde Beast - Canada's Wonderland Mean Streak - Cedar Point Everything outside of Cedar Point, Wonderland and Darien Lake are new. Everything except Ghoster Coaster was ridden in 2010.

This year, I'm finally going on my first TPR trip. So as you can imagine, I'm extremely excited. Apart from that, I'm also excited for a few other things. Here they are in no particular order: Windseeker at CW (yes, I am excited for this, Wonderland doesn't really get much in the way of tall attractions) Random trip to Hershey and Knoebel's in June Finally being able to get credit # 100 this coming summer (if all goes according to plan, it should be Phoenix at Knoebel's) Being able to marathon Goliath at La Ronde again on the Northeast Trip...I love that ride.

It didn't really go anywhere....

Without a doubt, the biggest achievement of the decade has been the renaissance of the wooden coaster. Companies like GCI, Gravity Group and Intamin have completely revolutionized the wooden coaster and what it can be. Gone are the days of the simple out and back or more traditional "boring" designs. Now, we're seeing twisting, airtime filled works of art. Even the way wooden coasters ride now is a complete change. Gone are the days of the rough and tumble wooden coasters (I'm looking at you, Summers & Dinn). Now, wooden coasters are almost steel smooth, but still retain that wooden coaster charm. We're seeing things that just plain haven't been done before, and everyone, GP and enthusiasts alike are eating it up. In the last Mitch Hawker steel poll, "favourite wooden coaster anywhere" finished FOURTH. That is absolutely ridiculous. Each year, the wooden coaster designs at IAAPA are becoming more and more interesting than their steel counterparts. I say, enjoy the ride, guys. This is a golden time.

BBW was like most people here, my first "big" coaster when I was a kid. I remember being absolutely terrified of the ride, but loving every second of it. Going through the village was awesome and the second drop was my pretty much my favourite thing ever. But, that was back in the early 1990's. Fast forward to 2007, the last time I visited BGW. I was super excited to ride BBW again, thinking of it like a return to my childhood. By this point, I had already been on a good deal of other rides and had become more knowledgable about roller coasters in general. And you know...it just wasn't the same. The village seemed slow and the brake on the second drop just about ruined it for me. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed my childhood memories. Now that said, it was still fun...but not what I would call amazing or "omg top 10 coaster". I'd even put Vortex/Flight Top Gun Deck over it. Do I miss the ride? You're damn right I do, but it's not because it was the most amazing ride ever, it's because of the memories attached to it. And from what I've seen in this thread (minus people who haven't quite grasped reading comprehension), most people feel the same.

Here are my favourite pictures from this year... Voyage right before the queue fly-by Diamonback at dusk Millennium Force's first overbank Corkscrew over the CP Midway First drop on Whirlwind at Seabreeze Seabreeze's Yoyo Second loop of Vampire at La Ronde Klockwerks at Canada's Wonderland It was a good summer...

I'd be interested to see what some of the flat ride manufacturers have to offer.

This is not a nice flashback. I was a geography major and I hated GIS. I would avoid using it any opportunity I had. That said, this project looks like it would be a ton of fun.

Let's not start that debate, lol. It may be 174ft tall, but its way better than some 200+ft rides I've been on.

Part 8: La Ronde One day at work, my enthusiast friend and I start talking about roller coasters and theme parks. He brings up the fact that there's a park in Montreal that neither of us had been to. Well, one thing led to another and suddenly we found ourselves on the road to Montreal and La Ronde located therein. After driving through the night, we arrived at the hotel around 1:00am and started to prepare for the next day. Normally, I won't plug a hotel, but I highly recommend the Holiday Inn Express on Boul. Rene Levesque. Fantastic place. Anyways, the next day we made our way out of the hotel, through the maze of one way streets that is Montreal and over to La Ronde. Or rather the line to get into the parking lot to get into La Ronde. La Ronde is located pretty much on the same island as the old Expo '67 grounds, so you have to take the Jacques Cartier Bridge and wind your way through some park area before getting to the entrance gates. When we tried to get there, the traffic was backed up onto the bridge in both directions. Definitely not a good sign. After waiting in horrendous traffic for 30-40 minutes, we finally got into the parking lot. Turns out, they only had 2/5 toll gates open for their park opening, which caused traffic to back up and create a huge mess. Tragically, this only foreshadowed the rest of our day. The parking lots at La Ronde are seemingly light years away from the actual entrance to the park and there were no trams anywhere to be seen. So, we bit the bullet and sprung for preferred parking. It was a bit more, but it was totally worth it as we parked more or less at the main gates. However, when we got to the main gates, it was time to get in line yet again to get our admissions. At most (if not all) parks I've been to, they have a majority of their ticket windows open for park opening. Not La Ronde. They had maybe 25% of the windows open, and that's being generous. And the windows that were opened? The staff moved like snails. We waited for another 30-40 minutes just to get our tickets to get into the park. Needless to say, we were not pleased. Definitely not a good way to start the day. Let this be a lesson though, always buy tickets online if you can. So, we finally got into the park. Hurrah. We then made our way to the FlashPass building. Surprisingly, there were no lines to purchase one, so we got ours fairly quickly. The Gold FlashPass was $50 or thereabouts, but it was most definitely worth it. After grabbing our FlashPass, we immediately queued for Goliath and started to make our way to the back of the park. We arrived, had our passes scanned and skipped 99% of the line. I had never used a FlashPass before, so I was very impressed with what it was offering. The crew at Goliath (or as it was pronounced "Go-yai-eth") was actually pretty decent and kept the queue moving. Something that was a bit of a rarity today. Now, as for the ride itself? Wow. Why isn't this ride more talked about? There is airtime to be found all over the place, the pacing is great and there are even some lateral forces! On each airtime hill, there is awesome floater air which seems to get stronger as the ride goes on. I only have very positive things to say about this ride. Out of the 4 B&M hypers I've been on, this is easily my favourite, and that's including Apollo's Chariot. Yes. It was that good. This is definitely going to be one of the standout rides on next year's Northeast Trip. We then moved on to something decidedly less awesome, Ednor L'Attaque, their "new" SLC. We made our way through the FlashPass line, only to be stuck at the station. The crew on this ride was horrendous. They were extremely slow loading/unloading and were stacking trains like nobody's business....and there are only two trains. We waited in the station for the ride for quite a while before finally getting our chance to ride. The ride itself is fairly "meh". It's your standard Vekoma hang 'n bang, nothing to write home about. And of course, at the end of our ride, we sat on the brake run for around 5 minutes as the crew feebly attempted to load and dispatch another train. Why Six Flags decided to put this here when they already have an awesome B&M invert, I will never know. After getting awesome and new out of the way, we decided to hit up the lower capacity rides. First on our list we hit up Toboggan Nordique, the only ride in the park without FlashPass. By the time we got to it, the line was already fairly large. Combined with it's low capacity and lackluster operations, we ended up waiting almost an hour for it. The ride itself is your standard wild mouse, nothing special about it, but totally not worth the hour wait. Our next ride was restraint popping Le Boomerang. Luckily, this ride did have FlashPass, so we didn't wait in line much if at all for it. I thought The Bat at Canada's Wonderland was an old Boomerang, but damn is Le Boomerang old. The cars on it have to have been first generation Vekoma cars. Bizzare, rattly and slightly terrifying. On the plus side, there wasn't too much headbanging, so it had that going for it. Which is nice. Next up came Super Menege, the equally as old corkscrew coaster. Nothing really too interesting or noteworthy about this ride. We then made our way over to Le Monstre, the park's "racing" woodie. Though they were running both sides, they weren't doing anything even remotely resembling racing during our entire visit. They were dispatching one side at a time and taking their time doing it. Again...thank god for FlashPass. The ride itself actually wasn't too bad. It was shaky, especially in the helix thingy of doom, but not violently slow. My biggest criticism of the ride would be that it feels slow, especially through the helix bowl thing. It tends to crawl through the turns, and with the high bank of the turns, its very odd and all around "wrong" feeling. I definitely think the ride would be pretty cool if it actually raced....especially in the helix bowl. The criss-crossing of the tracks would be awesome with 2 trains. From there, we made our way over to Cobra, the park's Intamin stand up. This was my first Intamin stand up, and I quite liked it. Some of the drops on the ride were something that you would expect to see on a sit down or invert, rather than a stand-up, which made them awesome to do standing up. There were some nice pops of airtime and some decent forces throughout the entire ride. The ride was a bit shaky, but there was very little headbanging....also very little hits to the junk (which I was extremely thankful for). This is one of the few stand-ups that I'd probably re-ride multiple times in the same day. Which may bode well for the North East trip. Our final coaster stop took us to Vampire, the park's Batman mirror image clone. This would have been my first Batman clone and oh....my...god. This ride was amazing. The ride was pure intensity from start to finish, which I instantly fell in love with. The two wingovers produce superb forces and any ride that has a zero-g roll in it is a-ok in my books. As we hit the brake run, I was stunned just how crazy a small-ish ride like that actually is. I can understand why Six Flags put clones of the ride virtually everywhere...simply fantastic. After Vampire, we grabbed a quick poutine (because you don't go to Montreal and not get poutine) and started re-riding things. We also stopped by The Nintendo Experience which was just random Wii and DS games in an old building. It was weird and I didn't quite get it. Near the end of the night, we made full use of our FlashPasses and marathoned Goliath and Vampire until the park closed for the evening. Overall, I would say my La Ronde experience was far more negative than positive. There are some great rides (Goliath, Vampire), but the lousy operations and staff that just didn't seem to care put a huge damper on my day. My hope is that when the North East trip stops there next summer things are different. But, from other La Ronde reports I've read, I'm not sure that would be the case. I now present to you, pictures of La Ronde! (I forgot my camera at home, so I borrowed my friend's. His camera is a bit old.) After waiting 30 minutes to park, we now wait 30 minutes to buy tickets. Random old fountainy type thing I suddenly crave pizza. Not sure why though... Hey, look at that! A roller coaster! So very, very, VERY awesome. Also, credit #80! And now for something decidedly less awesome... *sigh* Ouch ouch ouch ouch Crappy operations + mediocre coaster = blech. We waited WAY too long for this ride. On the plus side, three F-18's flew over us while waiting. That was pretty cool. Mousetacular Ker-sploosh! It was barely over 20 degrees and rainy...we didn't ride it. Most places have a three point shootout. Not in Montreal. It's all about hockey, here. lol, Roller Coaster Tycoon Harnesses stayed fastened! Hurray! Le Boomerang? Les ampoules. Super Ménage à Trois...wait what? That's not what it's called? Well, that sucks. More Super Menege Shark! A "racing" woodie... Meh... Grrrr...je suis Le Monstre. Donnez-moi des bonbons! Very few places still have Condors...kind of cool to see Bahahahaha. Lamest shot tower ever. Terrifying. Oh, hells yes! Awesome! Still awesome! Crazy forces in the wingovers... I would sell my own mother for a zero-g roll. Well...probably not. But I still like them. Nintendo Experience, eh? Bizzare. Yarr... And now for some blurry pictures from Spirale! More Monstre Yet even more Monstre The noise in that corner of the park is so loud, but the B&M roar is just so good, you don't even care. More Ednor love love love love love Every hill is full of awesome and win. Oh yeah, they had swings too. Get out of there dog, you are not a fireman. You can't even hold a hose. Up next, Canada's Wonderland Halloween Haunt!

Wow...that's actually really sad to see. Especially since Darien Lake could definitely use the ride (and has for years). I'm in agreement with a bunch of others here in thinking that the ride will never be built. Got on Cobra in August. It's holding up OK. A little shaky, but completely rideable and dare I say....re-rideable?

Definitely not going to miss Jet Scream. I haven't ridden it since maybe 1999...it's just not my thing. That said, it did make for some good pictures when it was upside down and whatnot.

Miracles all up in this thread...

See you in hell, candy boys! <3 The Simpsons (seasons 3-7)

This sounds like another re-hashing of the old Footloose rumour. I'd be extremely skeptical until something is even briefly hinted at.

Went to Hallowe'en Haunt last night, and had a blast. Definitely the best Haunt in the last couple of years. I loved Blood Shed and Blood on the Bayou. And yes, Vortex is super awesome at night. But then again, it's always super awesome.

Part 7: Martin's Fantasy Island Our last stop of the day was Martin's Fantasy Island. Growing up in Southern Ontario, I would always see commercials for Martin's during the summer on the Buffalo TV stations. Even going down to the US with family, we'd always drive by Martin's as we crossed Grand Island. Yet, I had never been there. All that was about to change. After leaving Darien Lake and driving pretty fast along the interstate, we arrived at Martin's Fantasy Island around 5:30 or so. Luckily for us, admission after 5:00 is dirt cheap, so the park gets a +1 for that. We came into the entrance area of the park, which was a lot nicer than I had expected. There was a lot of green to be found, and all the buildings were fairly well kept. The random wild west area was pretty odd, but nicely themed. Of course, we wandered by Malaria Lake. Water should never be that deep a green. Seriously. I'd imagine if you fell out of one of the canoes, you'd turn into a monster...or start melting like that bad guy at the end of Robocop. Anyways, our first stop was of course, Silver Comet. This ride was pretty much the reason for our coming to Martin's Fantasy Island. Wow, what a surprise! This CCI woodie was far better than I had imagined or hoped it would be. It had some nice little pops of air, and some great lateral forces in the turns. That last swooping turn before the brake run is AWESOME. It's kind of sad that the ride gets no attention...it's definitely way underrated. As soon as we got off the ride, my friend and I looked at eachother and got right back in line. Simply fantastic. Wanting to get in the credits before anything else, we made our next stop over to Crazy Mouse, their Reverchon spinning mouse (at least I think its Reverchon). I had heard that the ride didn't spin much, if at all. Well, for some reason, ours seemed to be stuck in "omg wtf crazy spin" mode...again probably because of weight distribution (bigger guys on one end, small kids on the other). The madness didn't really start until the second half of the ride, but when it did....omg. It was immensly fun, not gonna lie. Still dizzy, we made our way over to their log flume since it was still pretty hot out. I had seen pictures from the last time TPR was there and kind of knew what to expect. But...I really didn't expect to get THAT wet...especially with only two people in the boat. That was easily the wettest log flume I've ever been on. Today was a good day for log flumes...both Seabreeze and Martin's have good ones. Right on. Our next stop was Flight, the not-quite-Starflyer. The ride is only like 100 feet tall or so, but it still scared the ever living crap out of me. Something about being that high up, only being held with swing chains is a little unnerving. I'm not looking forward to how freaked out Windseeker will make me next year. But at least that has solid metal arms. Around this time, the park was winding down, so we grabbed one or two more rides on Silver Comet and left for the day, concluding our adventure through Upstate New York. We crossed the border in Niagara Falls, ate dinner at Dennys (which is a tradition of ours whenever we're in the US/Niagara Falls) and made our way back to Kitchener. It was a great, albeit tiring day of riding roller coasters and driving all over the place. We decided to go on the trip to see if we could do it....and we did. So, mission accomplished. Here are some pictures from Martin's. Last stop of the day... Don't do it! He's not tame! Don't be a hero! Random western theming More random western theming Super fun happy slide Awesomeness awaits! Go ride this. Now. It's OK, I'll wait. OK, back? Good. Here's a pirate ship! Fun? Wow! Didn't ride this Disk-O. One was enough for today. Blurry picture of Flight Not cool. So very not cool. Spinning mouse madness From the other side... I love the Tilt-a-Whirl sign. Very iconic. I think the last thing Phil needs is more fries and fingers. Just sayin'. Time to leave...thanks for an awesome (if short) time Martin's! I'll definitely be back! Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Next up, La Ronde!